


region of the summer stars

by astrainclinant



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crime Scenes, Developing Relationship, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7471260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrainclinant/pseuds/astrainclinant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shiro's life revolves around his job and his team and occasionally dealing with his trauma. The young man who was dumped onto his doorstep is a new development.</p>
            </blockquote>





	region of the summer stars

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for this fic was drawn from the anime Psycho Pass, though you don't really need to watch the anime to really understand what's happening here. There are also semi-graphic depictions of murder scenes and violence, which is most of the reason for this fic's rating, since I really do mean it when I say that the sexual content is super implied. Like. Blink and you miss it implied.
> 
> That being said, this fic is only partially beta'd, so please forgive any issues.

The darkness was shuddering and writhing all around him. He couldn’t look at it for too long without feeling nauseated, yet it was all that he could look at. All that was around him. So his gaze moved and flitted and shifted and he tried to remember how to breathe.

Tried to remember not to choke when something in the darkness moved.

Shiro shifted and something in his chest jolted when he realized that he couldn’t move. He struggled, uselessly, and his mouth went dry as a face materialized around him, blurred at the edges and not quite real. Laughter was echoing from the darkness.

The terror that he felt was real, though.

His mouth opened and he tried to shout, struggled harder when he realized that he could not. Pain bloomed along his right arm and he threw his head back, mouth opening around a senseless call. It was sharp, it was burning, it was going to consume him whole, oh god, he was going to die, he was going to die, he was going to die——

He jerked upwards, gasping and finally free and he found himself staring into the darkness. Not a malicious and moving darkness, though. Normal darkness. Shadows were cast across his bedroom walls and moonlight was streaming in through his window, soft in the wake of the quiet dark. He was alone.

Shiro’s arm was still burning. His left hand flew and groped at it, heartrate still racing. It did not calm even as he made contact with something solid, and his heart leapt into his throat as he looked down at his arm. Not his arm. The metal arm that they had replaced his old arm with, after they had cut it off of him, slowly and painfully.

Bile rose up in his throat. He swallowed it down.

He sat there for several minutes, breathing deeply and not quite blinking, left hand clenching and unclenching at his side. Shiro didn’t move until the intensive need to vomit passed, and when he did he half rolled and waved a hand at his bedside table, squinting at the display that popped up. Far too early to be awake. It would be a while until the sun would even start rising, yet he couldn’t imagine that he would be getting sleep any time soon.

So he rolled out of bed after a few more minutes and went through the motions to get ready for the day. He went for a jog on his treadmill and washed up and got halfway dressed before heading out into his kitchen and starting his machines, before getting entirely dressed.

Uniform and gloves.

By the time that he was sitting at his table and drinking coffee with toast in front of him while he read the morning news, the sky was just starting to lighten to purples and oranges. Before he left his apartment, he double checked his uniform and straightened his collar.

Altea was just starting to wake up when he stepped outside, and he smiled at his elderly neighbor as he went. “Ms. Jing, would you like some help carrying that?”

“Oh, Shiro,” the woman said, smiling up at him in return, the stern lines of her face softening. “You’re up so early —— well, no need, no need, my boy, I’m still spry enough to handle the likes of this! Go on, now, off to work with you.”

“Have a great day, Ms. Jing,” Shiro said, settling a gentle hand on her shoulder before he took off. He took his car and, due to how early he had gotten up, didn’t encounter any traffic. A miracle in and of itself, in some ways, and he took a brief detour to pick up some breakfast sweets for the rest of the team. When he finally arrived to the station, the sky had turned a light blue and he was one of the few cars in the parking lot.

“Good morning, Hana,” Shiro said to the young woman sitting behind the desk.

“Morning, Captain Shirogane,” Hana said sunnily.

“You know you can just call me Shiro, right?” Shiro said, stepping closer to the desk and opening the box, offering Hana a pick at the collection of donuts, pastries, and otherwise.  
Hana laughed and took a donut, grinning up at him, “Yeah, yeah, Shiro. Now: get out of here, I can’t stand to look at your ugly mug anymore,” she teased, winking.

“So cruel,” Shiro said with a sigh, still smiling as he closed the box and continued past the front desk. He made his way past the elevator and started up the stairs. When he opened the door to the office he stepped over the small mess that was probably left by Lance the day before and wasn’t at all surprised by seeing Allura sitting at her desk.

“You’re early, today,” Allura said, leaning back from her computer.

“I could say the same to you,” Shiro said with a raise of his brow. He opened the box for her and smiled warmly when she grabbed a croissant. “Everything okay?”

“Apart from the massive pile of paperwork Lance and Hunk have been neglecting, everything is wonderful,” Allura said wryly, ripping the corner off of the croissant and popping it into her mouth. “Try to talk some sense in them, please?” she said after swallowing.

“You’re the senior most officer here,” Shiro said, hands raising jokingly.

“Yes, but my special brand of persuasion only works for so long against some,” Allura’s voice was warm with an undercurrent of laughter.

“You could easily say the same for me,” Shiro picked up the box again, turning to deposit it on a general table tucked in the back of their crowded office. “Our good cop/bad cop shtick only holds so much sway, after all.”

Allura sighed and propped her chin onto her hands, smile still teasing at the edges of her mouth. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? The three of them listened to us so easily, once upon a time, it’s as if we’ve lost them somewhere along the line.”

“They’ll return to us eventually,” Shiro played along, sitting down in his chair and rolling back a few inches as a result. “They have to. We’re the reason they get fed every day, anyways.”

Allura tittered and Shiro chuckled in response and they settled into an amiable silence as Shiro turned his system on and waited for it to boot up. There were no investigations to research further, as they had just recently wrapped up a long term case. It had been a relief, at the time, to slap handcuffs on the criminal and drag them into the back of a high security police van, but there was a small part of Shiro that ached, in the aftermath.

He wondered if that made him a bad person.

The quiet —— the peace —— felt so tenuous that he was always half holding his breath. It could have been the paranoia talking, the PTSD according to his company mandated therapist, but that didn’t stop him from waiting for the other foot to drop. It was always a matter of time.

There was peace, though, and he could at least be glad that his team was out of immediate harm’s way.

As morning stretched, Pidge dragged themselves in, quickly followed by Hunk with Lance bringing up the rear. The trio looked tired, which was understandable given how many near all-nighters they had all pulled near the end of the last case. Lance was still on crutches, due to the fact that he had twisted his ankle, but the doctor had said that he would be back on his own two feet soon.

“You doing alright today, bud?” Shiro said, turning away from his monitors.

Lance was already halfway through a Danish and said, through a full mouth, “Feelin’ great, man.” Pidge elbowed him in the side, and he swallowed before saying, “It barely hurts anymore, which is fantastic, because I think I’m gonna go crazy if I have to keep going places with these crutches for much longer.”

“You still have a few more days,” Pidge said, waving a donut at Lance. “It was just a sprain, but it was a major sprain, so you have to stay off of it until the doctor gives you the okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Lance said, rolling his eyes.

“Thanks for breakfast, Shiro,” Hunk said, grinning brightly, “you always know where to get the best stuff.”

“No problem,” Shiro said, “help yourself to as many pastries as you can possibly gorge yourself on, there’s plenty.”

“Lance, if you keep moving around like that, you’re going to sprain your ankle again,” Allura said, raising her eyebrow at him. “Sit down and stay put, if you end up hurting yourself anymore you’re going to be on desk duty for a month.” After a moment she smiled, slow and deceptively sweet, “While you’re at it, finish that paperwork that I’ve needed from you for the past three days.”

Lance’s shoulders fell and he groaned aloud, “Threatening me with desk duty? That’s cruel, even for you, boss,” but he was hobbling over to his messy desk, anyways.

Shiro sat back and looked at his team and smiled. The only one missing was Coran, though he was normally elsewhere in the building, maintaining and testing equipment as well as looking out for any trouble that they would need to be alerted about immediately. Lance was poking at Pidge with his pencil whilst Hunk leaned against the back of Lance’s chair, helping himself to a donut. Allura was rolling her eyes at them fondly as she typed something on her computer. All of their desks ranged from neat to post-tornado state and the floor of their office was covered in papers and pencils and maybe even a stray badge.

Everything was normal and something awful inside of him settled at the sight of it.

He may have constantly been waiting for the other shoe to drop and he may be plagued with nightmares of what happened to him and he may be unable to look himself in the mirror when he could see his right arm, but he had his team.

Sometimes, that had to be enough.

——

“Are you feeling alright, Shiro?” Pidge asked near the end of the day as they were getting their stuff ready to leave. Concern was coloring their expression, and Shiro could barely look at it.

“I’m fine, Pidge,” Shiro said with a smile, turning away from his monitor. “Be safe getting home, though, okay?”

“Of course,” Pidge said, slinging their bag over their shoulder before fixing Shiro with a considering look. “I can stay a little bit longer until you’re ready to leave, you know that, right?”

“I know,” he said before gently waving his hand to shoo them towards the door. “I promise that I’m alright, though, and you should head on home. Get some food, get some rest, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Bright and early,” Pidge intoned with a smile, before waving at Shiro and heading out the door.

He was alone.

Lance and Hunk had left after, thankfully, finishing the paperwork that Allura had been pushing them to get done for the past few days. Coran had swung by a little after they left to collect Allura and force her to go home, as well, naturally followed by Pidge.

Shiro stared at his computer monitors, knowing that he wasn’t looking at anything worthwhile. He could go back to his apartment. He should go back to his apartment.

Instead, he kept sitting there and grabbed his mouse, clicking through a few files. He typed in his password when he hit a wall and continued forwards, navigating through the veritable maze that was how files were stored. It made it more confusing for people who shouldn’t have been looking through these things, supposedly.

His mouse hovered over a file. _ZG_VC_AX_052440.wav_

The mouse was creaking beneath his grip. He let go of it after a few shuddering deep breaths, rubbing at his face with his hands, instead. He almost winced at the hard press of his metal hand against his face through his gloves, but managed not to. Shiro wasn’t sure who he was trying to hide it from, since he was the only one in the office.

He could imagine Allura chastising him.

After a few more minutes, he closed the files and sat back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Finally, he got up and started to gather his things, straightening his tie compulsively. Outside, night had fallen, and he had no idea how long he had spent in that office alone, but he made his way back to his apartment.

The ominous feeling that had ebbed away in the presence of his friends returned, slowly but steadily, as he got closer to his building. As if a massive gaping hole had opened itself in his abdomen and was about to suck the very life out of him. Horrifying and dark and clinging and digging and he had to struggle to get himself out of his car.

Inside his building, it was quiet. Most of the residents were either sleeping or winding down for sleep, kids already in bed and adults maybe wrapping a few things up. As he made his way up to his apartment, walking up the stairs, his footsteps seemed to echo.

When he got to his floor and saw something slumped in front of his door, bile rose in his throat again. He swallowed thickly and made his way slowly to his door, only to speed up when he noticed that it was a person sprawled on the floor.

A young man, he realized when he got close enough. Long and dark hair, body collapsed in an almost fetal position. Shiro, with his bleeding heart and trembling bones, didn’t know when he had gone to his knees beside the man, but he was turning him over gently, regardless. He pulled the young man into his arms carefully, cradling him and checking for his face, first, and when he found nothing immediately wrong there, he checked the rest of his body.

Finding a note pinned to his shirt made it feel like ice had been injected into his body.

Shiro unpinned the note gently, careful not to disturb the sleeping man, and unfolded it in a trembling hand.

_For you._

The words were written in a familiar scrawl that made him want to vomit all over again. They almost did, really, vision swimming and hand clenching around the note compulsively, before he remembered himself. Remembered the unconscious man in his arms.

So he stood up, slow and careful, carrying the man carefully as he opened his apartment door and made his way inside of the apartment. It was dark and quiet but he was still tense as he laid the man down on the couch. When he made sure that there was a pillow beneath his head and all of his limbs were accounted for, Shiro did a thorough once over of his apartment.

He found nothing out of place. Not a thing.

That didn’t make his skin stop crawling.

Shiro returned to the couch, eventually, and leaned over to take a better look at the man. Young, the way that he was, though that could be attributed to the fact that his face was relaxed with sleep. He couldn’t tell if the man was sleeping because he was genuinely sleeping, or if he was sleeping because he had been forced to.

He gritted his teeth to stop thinking about that, too.

All that the young man was wearing was a black t-shirt and jeans and a belt and boots. Shiro took his boots off carefully and eyed the belt, staring at the pouch that could hold a knife. Compulsively, he wanted to check, but he swallowed down the instinct and reminded himself that the man had a right to his own privacy.

Instead, Shiro dragged himself into his kitchen and made himself a small dinner and made an extra plate, just in case the man woke up. When he didn’t, Shiro put the leftovers into his refrigerator and checked on his guest one more time, before retiring to his bedroom.

When he changed out of his uniform and hung it up, he sat on the edge of his bed and tried to force the tension out of his body. It felt as if every last nerve in his body was absolutely screaming, making him hyper aware. His arm was hurting. There was a strange man in his living room that he couldn’t find the will in himself to get rid of, despite the fact that it was probably a bad idea to keep him in his apartment. For you, the note had said, and Shiro knew who the note was from. Who the man was from.

By the time he laid down and closed his eyes, he was seeing flashes of purple beneath his eyelids.

——

Shiro wasn’t a light sleeper by choice, only by circumstance. Once upon a time, he had been able to sleep more easily and more heavily, but as of recent, the smallest of noises caused him to jerk to attention.

So, when he heard his bedroom door opening, he was already awake. He hadn’t quite fallen asleep at any point, anyways, instead lingering in a space between wakefulness and unconsciousness. For a time, he had lingered closer to sleep, but hadn’t quite gotten there. Therefore, the soft rustle caused his body to tense and his mind to become acutely alert, but he kept his eyes closed.

His eyes snapped open at some point between knees straddling his hips and a knife being pressed against his throat, though.

The young man was perched over him, looming despite his slight form, and he looked pissed. To say the least. A little confused, too, and a lot defensive, but mostly pissed off. “Who the hell are you?” the young man said, voice rough and low, as if he hadn’t used it in quite a while.

“Takashi Shirogane,” he said, clam and even, because he had dealt with shell shocked victims more than once in his life. Whether or not this man could be considered a victim was questionable, but the principle still stood. “I mostly go by Shiro, though. I found you outside of my apartment, collapsed and unconscious, and I decided to take you in so you can get sufficient rest.”

The knife was still being pressed against his throat, “Why would I collapse in front of your apartment?”

“You didn’t,” Shiro said, because he was an honest person, “you were dropped off. There was a note pinned to your shirt, it’s on the left bedside table.”

The young man squinted at him distrustfully before slowly leaning over, only glancing away from Shiro momentarily whilst continuing to keep the knife at his throat. Shiro thought, vaguely, about how the knife was sharp, but not sharp enough to cut him with the pressure that the man was applying. “For you,” he said aloud, disbelievingly, “what am I, a present?”

“Do you not remember anything from before you ended up at my door?” Shiro asked, because it felt necessary to, even if he already knew the answer.

“Does it look like I do?” the man said caustically.

“Look,” Shiro said, voice going gentler and more comforting. “I promise that I mean you no harm and that I’m not going to keep you here, but I do have some food in the refrigerator and we can talk about this properly as you eat.”

Slowly, the man started to lean back, and the knife left Shiro’s throat equally as slowly, if not more so. Then, in a practical blur of movement, the man vaulted off of the bed and step back a few paces from it. He was still holding the knife.

Shiro didn’t comment on it as he got out of bed uncomfortably aware of the fact that the young man could see his false metal arm. The young man, however, didn’t comment on it or even spare it a glance, though that could have been Shiro’s wishful thinking. He took what he could get, though, and walked out of the room, hyper aware of the fact that a man was right behind him holding a knife.

Well, if the guy had wanted to kill him, he already would have. Probably.

He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the leftovers from earlier, popping them in the microwave before turning around. The young man was standing just inside of the kitchen, lingering near a counter and holding the knife, not bothering to conceal it. In brighter light, he looked exhausted and a few shades paler than what Shiro imagined his skin tone to be and his body was tense from head to toe. Ready to attack at any given moment.

They stood in tense silence until the microwave beeped and he turned to get the plate out, setting it on the table. After a moment, he slid it forwards, “I don’t know when you last ate, but I’m sure you’re hungry. You’re welcome to eat as much as you want.”

The man seemed to struggle for a moment before he moved forwards and sat down slowly, staring at Shiro as he went. When he started eating, he began to tuck in with gusto, and Shiro ached on the inside at the thought of the guy not having eaten for a long while.

“What’s your name?” Shiro asked, sitting down himself. When the man looked up and just stared at him for a solid ten seconds, before going back to eating, Shiro had to resist the urge to sigh. Alright, so that was how this was going to go. “Look, I know that you don’t trust me —— you don’t have to trust me, I’m just some random guy whose apartment you’re in —— but I need you to believe me when I say that I want to help you. What do you want from me, here? Do you want me to take you to the hospital?”

“No,” the man said with such immediacy that it made Shiro lean back for a moment, “no hospitals.”

“Okay,” Shiro said slowly, “no hospitals. I have a phone, if there’s anyone you want to contact.”

“There’s no one,” the man said shortly.

That gave Shiro pause as he tried to comprehend the fact that the guy was, evidently, alone in the world. He had been —— given this guy, and the man apparently didn’t even have anyone to call for help. He knew what this man had to have dealt with, probably, and it was hard to breathe against the inherent panic that he felt at the thought.

Yet he remembered nothing, evidently.

Small mercies, perhaps.

“What do you want to do next?” Shiro asked, finally.

The man shrugged dismissively and finished eating. He pushed back from the table and put the dish in the sink (it struck Shiro oddly, the fact that this man didn’t trust him yet was polite enough to put a plate in the sink) and when he turned back, the knife was back out.

“You can sleep on the couch, if you’d like,” Shiro said.

He moved without further prompting, leaving the kitchen behind and moving around the living room. Shiro busied himself with rinsing the dish and putting it in the dishwasher and when he walked into the living room, the man was lying on the couch on his back, still holding the knife. He was watching him, still keyed up and distrustful, and Shiro walked into the bedroom, not closing the door behind him.

In the morning, the man was asleep on the couch, yet all the softness that had been there the night before was lost to the tenseness in his face and body, even in the midst of sleep.

Shiro skipped his morning run and instead got ready for work, ignoring the fact that he was running on only a few hours of sleep, none of which had been legitimate sleep to begin with. He jotted down a quick note for the guy, before pulling on his gloves.

              _I’m at work, you’re alone in the apartment, I promise. Help yourself to anything you want._

                       _—Shiro_

——

At work, Shiro was distracted and listless and he knew that everyone could tell. They had all voiced their concerns, and he had returned them with a soft smile and a reassurance that he was alright, but there was something cold and heavy sitting in his chest. The realization that they had found him had settled in rather belatedly, but he supposed that he could be excused since he had left a strange man in his apartment, all alone.

They knew where he lived. They had found him.

It was hard to breathe around that realization, but he managed. They didn’t try to kill him. They weren’t going to try to kill him.

He was their best creation.

When everyone was out getting lunch, Shiro stared at his computer for a few long moments before shoving down any guilt he felt and pulling up a database of all residents of Altea. He went through a few search filters, half wishing that he had a picture of the man to make the process easier, and by the time that everyone had come back and Allura set his lunch on his desk, he hadn’t found anything.

He hadn’t found anything by the end of the day. Not a single thing.

It was like the man didn’t exist.

Shiro left the office earlier than he had the day before, when the sun was still setting and night hadn’t settled itself over the city. He drove home and didn’t expect a single thing, yet when he walked into his apartment he found the man sitting there, knife on the coffee table, knees pulled onto the couch and watching television.

“You’re still here,” Shiro said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

“Can’t exactly go anywhere,” the guy said, flat and still cautious and staring at Shiro as if he were ready to attack him at a moment’s notice.

“Because you don’t exist,” Shiro said.

“You looked me up,” the man didn’t sound surprised, and Shiro imagined that he had gone through his stuff rather thoroughly. Found the medals that he had gotten from the Ministry of Welfare and looked at pictures and connected the dots, most likely. It wasn’t hard to decipher that Shiro was an Inspector for the Criminal Inspection Department, though it was a bit harder to figure out that he worked for Division Zero, also known as Voltron, and was a Paladin.

That wasn’t exactly information available to the public.

He was also wearing his uniform, which helped.

“I did,” Shiro said, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it over his arm. “You didn’t show up in any of our systems,” a nonexistent person in his living room. Shiro didn’t know how they managed to get him in the front door, or how they got him from place to place to begin with, since there were scanners posted frequently in Altea that scanned people to ensure that its citizens were in the best, healthiest shape possible. It was a system designed by Allura’s own father.

The flipside of it was, of course, that if someone passed underneath a scanner and wasn’t registered in Altea, the Ministry of Welfare would be alerted and the Public Health Department would be dispatched.

“You didn’t turn me in,” the man said, mouth pursing.

“There was no reason to,” Shiro said with a shrug. “What do you want to eat for dinner?”

“What, no questions about the fact that I don’t have any identification?” behind him, Shiro could hear the man turning on the couch and could imagine him staring, dumbstruck, as Shiro walked into his bedroom.

“It’s not any of my business,” Shiro said over his shoulder, loosening his tie and starting to unbutton his shirt.

Quiet settled after that, apart from the low hum of the television, and when he was done changing he headed into the kitchen and took stock of everything that he had. It didn’t look like the man had eaten anything all day, but Shiro swallowed any and all concern he had in that regard. He settled on throwing together some pasta and heard the man walk in while he was in the middle of cooking.

“You’re weird, for a cop,” the man said.

“I’m an Inspector, not a cop,” Shiro pointed out, glancing over his shoulder. The man wasn’t holding his knife anymore, at least. “If you were a criminal who was an inherent risk to the public, then we’d have a problem.”

“Who said I wasn’t a criminal?”

“You haven’t tried to kill me, yet, so there’s that,” Shiro smiled at the man, and he felt a strange melancholy drip along his veins at how surprised the man looked. “Now, come over here and chop up come of these vegetables for me, would you? We can eat a salad with the pasta.”

The man obeyed after a few moments of hesitation and looked deeply confused for a moment by Shiro handing him a knife, but he cut the vegetables anyways.

When they sat down to eat, a silence settled over them again. “You wear gloves when you’re at work,” the man finally said.

Shiro coughed for a moment, surprised. “Yes, I do.”

“Do your coworkers not know?”

“They do,” Shiro said, feeling an acute discomfort. “It’s just —— easier, not to show it.”

“Okay,” the man said, before going back to eating.

Shiro rinsed their dishes and put them into the dishwasher while the man went back to the living room. When he walked in, Shiro hesitated, not sure whether or not he wanted to sit with him, and instead sat on the armchair next to the couch. They sat in silence, watching some random movie. When it was over, Shiro stood up and bid the man good night, and started to walk to his bedroom.

“My name is Keith, by the way,” he said as Shiro stepped into his bedroom.

Shiro froze and turned in the doorway, except Keith wasn’t facing him. He was staring at the dark television and completely unmoving. “In that case,” Shiro said, smiling softly, “sleep well, Keith.”

——

Shiro bought Keith a phone purely for the sake of convenience, since he didn’t have a landline in his apartment.

“Why the hell did you do that?” Keith asked, sounding annoyed but not quite looking it as he stared down at the phone in his hand.

“If you ever need to contact me when I’m not at the apartment, there won’t be many options for you,” Shiro explained, calm and even. “You aren’t required to use the phone in any capacity unless you want to or feel like you have to.”

Keith stared at him for a few long moments, before turning away from him and back to the television.

A few days later, when Shiro got a text message from Keith, he had a fleeting moment of panic as he grappled with his phone, drawing momentary stares from his team, before reassuring them. When he checked the message and only found a picture of the television with curly fries on it, he couldn’t help but laugh hard enough that he had to lean his forehead into his hand.

On his way home, he got curly fries.

——

“We need to neutralize the suspect and rescue the victim,” Allura said as they gathered around her outside of their vehicle, speaking slightly louder than usual because it was raining. “Only use deadly force when necessary, you all know the drill.”

“Of course, boss,” Lance said, grinning at the unamused look that she gave him.

Allura looked at all of them before nodding and turning on her heel, pressing her hand against the scanner at the side of their vehicle. The sound of metal sliding resounded and the side of their truck shifted and moved and a rack of five slots were drawn out. All five slots were filled, but only three were glowing with red and green and yellow.

Lance, Pidge, and Hunk grabbed for their Bayards, which came to life beneath their touch. Bayards were specially designed weapons which responded to the touch of only a few people, determined by methods which many did not know and were shrouded in mystery as a result. None of Division Zero quite knew how they worked, in truth, only that they were powerful and responded to the user’s touch, as well as their apparent threat level.

Whether or not a Bayard would use lethal force was entirely based on its own judgment of the situation as well as the user’s decision.

Shiro picked up his gun, a technical prototype of the Bayards which was entirely manual and utilized bullets only, but it was more than enough for him.

His Bayard had disappeared long ago.

Well, not that long ago.

“Be careful out there, and remember that the victim is your priority no matter what,” Allura said, pulling her own gun out of her holster as the rack closed back into their vehicle, the red slot disappearing from sight.

Later that night, when Shiro returned to his apartment, his hair was still soaked and his body was still tired from the chase, but they had saved the victim and had arrested the criminal and he was relieved for that. Keith was sitting on the couch watching the television when he came in, and he turned as Shiro was taking off his jacket.

“For being the hero of the hour, you don’t get a lot of limelight,” Keith said, expression inscrutable.

“That’s not why I do this job,” Shiro said, loosening his tie.

“People love a hero, though,” Keith was tilting his head and looking at Shiro with a considering expression. “It’s kind of weird that the media glosses over you.”

“I’m just another Investigator,” Shiro smiled, though there was unrest prickling at the base of his throat at the direction that this conversation was going. Division Zero, Team Voltron, both was and was not a secret by virtue of the nature of their jobs. They were just Investigators to the rest of the public, but there were some other variables that didn’t make them Investigators.

“Except you’re not,” Keith said, and it felt like ice had been dropped into the pit of his stomach, though he knew that the information was not inherently dangerous. Keith wasn’t inherently dangerous insofar as Shiro could tell.

After a few moments, Shiro finally said, “No, I’m not,” and Keith seemed to accept that answer and turned back to the TV, letting the topic rest.

The ice thawed and Shiro stared at Keith for a few more moments, before walking into his room and getting ready for bed.

——

The week following was quiet enough, with one major disturbance in the middle that was easily neutralized. Shiro continued to go from his apartment to the office and back home at more reasonable times than before, which was something that everyone took notice of, because of course they did. All of them worked in a small, cramped office, which meant that they were all intimately aware of what everyone else was up to.

“You’re not working yourself to death for once, Shiro,” Lance said near the end of the week, sitting backwards in his chair with his arms propped along the back of it, all but leering in Shiro’s direction. He had finally lost the crutches, and had quickly returned back to his usual self.

“I’ve never worked myself to death,” Shiro said, unable to quite keep the defensive tone out of his voice.

“Very nearly,” Allura said, even though she was supposed to be on his side. She smiled at him apologetically a few moments later, but there was no regret in her face.

Allura never regretted anything. Which was good, because otherwise, their job would be much harder.

“We’re just glad that you seem to be weaning yourself off of your workaholic tendencies,” Hunk said neutrally.

“Going home at an appropriate time is a huge step forwards,” Pidge said, half joking and grinning while they were at it.

Shiro didn’t have the heart to tell any of them that he hadn’t exactly weaned himself off of those tendencies, in particular, it was just that he had another mouth to feed suddenly. A smart mouth. That made random sarcastic comments and was living on his couch, because that mouth didn’t actually, technically exist. Oh, and that mouth had been delivered to him by their greatest enemy.

If anything, the tendencies may have gotten worse. Shiro was loathe to admit to it, but he had been more cautious lately, always combing the entirety of his apartment when he woke up and when he got back home. Keith noticed, clearly, but didn’t comment. He had taken to checking over his shoulder, constantly, and had gone through their maze of files multiple times, stopping on that same file.

_ZG_VC_AX_052440.wav_

He never opened it.

Instead, he tried to focus on a way to help Keith out so the guy could actually get out of his apartment sometime in his lifetime. Shiro compulsively felt bad for leaving Keith every day, knowing that he was entirely unable to go anywhere without attracting unwanted attention. When he had asked if it bothered Keith, Keith had just shrugged and said nothing, instead staring down at a book that had been on Shiro’s bookshelf.

The apartment was state of the art, built to withstand break ins of any sort, with the most recent in electronics. Technically speaking, he didn’t even have to make himself dinner. Electronics could do it for him. It was gifted to him by the Ministry of Welfare after the loss of his arm. A We’re very sorry for your loss and for what happened sort of present. He had taken it because it felt safer to live in than anything else.

Recently, he wasn’t very sure about that.

Regardless, it wasn’t like Keith was roughing it in his apartment, surrounded by modern electronics that would cater to his every whim after Shiro had programed to do so. That had been tricky, considering the fact that Keith didn’t exist and his finger prints weren’t easily accessible, but he found a way around it.

He could not, however, find a way around the Alfor System scanners. He didn’t have the clearance to randomly throw in a new person into the database without raising about a billion different alarms, and while he had tried, there was nothing to be found on Keith.

Keith wasn’t much help, either, apparently passive to the idea of staying in Shiro’s apartment for, ostensibly, the rest of his life. Shiro could tell that he was getting more and more keyed up as each day passed, though. It was obvious in the way that he looked at the doors, the windows, the ceiling. As if he wanted to escape.

Maybe he wanted to find his family. Maybe he just wanted to run far, far away from Altea. Shiro didn’t know, but he could tell that Keith wanted to be free.

Shiro could relate.

When he got back to his apartment that night, Keith was running on the treadmill wearing some of his clothes. The fact that Keith was wearing his clothes wasn’t inherently shocking, since Keith had started doing that a few days into his stay since, according to him, “What do you expect me to do, live in one pair of clothes?” and they were the most convenient. Naturally. Even though they were almost comically big on him.

Shiro was going to have to buy Keith some clothes.

“Figured how to get the treadmill out, I take it?” Shiro said. He had offered to show Keith how to operate the apartment at large, but Keith had brushed him off, claiming that he could handle it.

“Wasn’t that hard,” Keith said, barely sounding winded.

He laughed throatily and loosened his tie as he walked into his room. He changed into lounge clothes and washed up a bit and heard the treadmill turn off and then collapse back into the floor. When he walked back out, Keith was facing away from his bedroom door, and from what Shiro could tell, he was wiping his face with the shirt.

Shiro stared at the small curl of ink that he could see near the armhole of the tank top. He quickly looked away when Keith turned and their gazes caught and Keith tilted his head, a considering look flitting across his face.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Keith finally said, brushing past Shiro and walking into the bedroom.

He waited until he heard the bathroom door shut before walking into the kitchen. For a moment, he was dumbstruck by the fact that all that was left in the refrigerator was milk and there was some bread in the pantry. It was a horrible cliché.

After a few moments of consideration, he finally caved and picked up the phone to order something.

By the time that Keith was done with his shower and rejoined him in the living room, their food was on the way and he had chosen some random movie for them to watch, sitting in the arm chair. “I’m going to have to go grocery shopping tomorrow,” Shiro said, glancing over his shoulder as Keith vaulted over the back of the couch and settled into the cushions. “Hope you don’t mind Indian.”

“That’s fine,” Keith said with a shrug.

They passed the time before their food arriving in silence. When it did arrive, Shiro stood up and brought their food in, spreading it out on top of the coffee table. Keith made his own plate in silence, settling back against the cushions to eat, gaze unerringly stuck on the television. Shiro had begun to notice that Keith did things with an absolute sort of focus, only sparing slivers of attention for anything outside of his immediate bubble.

So when they were done eating and had left the plates on the coffee table, Shiro made sure to lean forward carefully, but with intent. Keith’s gaze flickered, though he didn’t quite turn yet. “Keith,” Shiro said to catch his attention fully, and he waited until the man had turned. Something at the base of his neck prickled underneath the full force of Keith’s entire attention. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make it so that you can leave this apartment,” he started.

“There isn’t a way,” Keith said, brows raising, “I have no paperwork on me to allow me to become registered in this city, I have no idea where I came from, and I don’t know much about myself to begin with. My name is Keith; I don’t know what my last name is. I appreciate your attempts, but there’s no way that I’m leaving your apartment any time soon.”

Shiro was struck for a moment by the realization that that was the most that Keith had ever said at once. The man was quiet by nature, evidently, apart from occasionally searing commentary on random things. “I don’t want you to be trapped here.”

“Don’t want the burden?” Keith said, smile playing around the edges of his mouth. It looked and felt a little mean.

“No,” Shiro said, genuine and honest and leaning forwards more, elbows resting against his knees as he looked Keith straight in the eye. “You are allowed to stay here for however long that you want, Keith, and I mean that. The fact that you’re stuck here, day in and day out, isn’t okay, but I just can’t figure out how to fix that.”

Keith looked honestly shocked for a few moments, eyes widening and mouth opening slightly, before his face smoothed back into neutrality. “A true hero,” he said, a little caustic, but Shiro got the feeling that he was doing it out of sheer defense. “There’s no way to fix it, Shiro. You’re just going to have to accept that.”

“I won’t,” Shiro said, sitting up straight again, “I can’t. I’ll figure out how to get you out of here, without getting you into major touble, I promise.”

“You’re weird,” Keith said, an apparent non sequitur that threw Shiro for a loop for a moment. “You work for the government, yet here you are, not wanting to follow its laws. Altea is supposed to be a paradise, a model for other cities to follow, with its flawless Alfor System. Yet you don’t want to hand me, a person who doesn’t exist, over.”

“You’ve been watching a lot of TV, haven’t you?” Shiro said with a humorless laugh. He rubbed a hand over his face and breathed deeply for a few moments, before looking at Keith again. “I work for the Criminal Investigation Department, Keith. I know the way things work, here. Plus, I’m not just going to throw you to the Ministry of Welfare when you’re unwilling to go. You aren’t a criminal, yourself, as far as I can see, and you haven’t tried to leave, yet. I’m okay with letting you stay here for as long as you need to, because I don’t think it’s right to throw an innocent man out as if he’s a criminal.”

“How virtuous of you,” Keith said, sitting back against the cushions again and looking at the television.

Shiro took that sign as the end of the conversation and turned, as well, letting silence settle back over them.

Later that night he dreamed of searing pain along his right arm and along his chest and he writhed with it, couldn’t quite breathe around it. Knives digging, flames burning, pain jolting and jerking and they were going to make him their Best. They were going to make him Better. They were going to make him their Greatest Weapon.

When he jerked away he did so with more violence than he tended to, arms flailing and body lurching and he struggled to breathe for several long minutes, panic clawing at his throat. His hands fisted his sheets fitfully, and he heard them rip beneath his right hand.

That would be his third set of sheets donated.

Moonlight was slanting across his room and his door was open and he combed his fingers through his hair. Forced himself not to wince when he saw white in his periphery. He rolled out of bed, slow and careful, and made his way to the door of his bedroom, something inside of him compulsively worrying about Keith.

Keith, who had been their present. For you, the note had said.

Did he suffer a similar fate?

His heartrate immediately spiked when he saw a figure sitting up on his couch, and it took him a few moments to realize that it was Keith. Just staring into space. Shiro wasn’t sure if he was awake or not, but he would bet good money on the man being awake.

“I have them, too,” Keith said, silence shattering. “Nightmares. Not about anything specific, I don’t think. Or I just don’t remember them when I wake up.”

It occurred to Shiro, as it had before, that Keith was a young man who had forgotten a lot of things. Who had forgotten everything, maybe. Shiro wasn’t sure if he had forgotten by choice or by force and he suspected it was the latter, rather than the former, given that all that Keith was left with was his name. Maybe a few other things, but not much else. He was lost in the world, but he couldn’t even exist in the world. Keith was trapped in Shiro’s apartment, unable to even go around the corner.

“Do you want me to sit with you?” Shiro said quietly. Misery loves company, after all.

Keith’s head seemed to dip for a moment, before he half turned and their eyes met and Shiro knew that they both looked exhausted and drawn. “Do what you want,” Keith finally said, sounding exhausted to his very core, and while the words were dismissive, Shiro knew it was a yes.

So he sat down next to Keith, and they stared into the distance together.

When Shiro woke up the next morning with Keith’s head on his shoulder, he just tipped his head back and breathed.

——

“You should absolutely buy some cookies,” Lance said the next day in the supermarket.

“That’s not conducive to the healthy diet of an Inspector,” Allura said, “now put those back, Lance.”

“They are delicious, though,” Hunk said.

“Yet entirely lacking in any true nutrition,” Coran pointed out.

“Your version of nutrition is to somehow inject perfectly good food with disgusting taste, though,” Pidge said, nose wrinkling.

“Well, excuse you,” Coran said, looking a little bemused and a lot offended.

“Could someone remind me why you all decided to come with me to the store?” Shiro said, rubbing his forehead. “All I’m doing is buying groceries —— and no, Lance, I am not buying cookies, so yes, you should put those back.”

“Well, we don’t really spend time together outside of the office anymore,” Hunk said with a shrug, looking a little hesitant to admit it. “Apart from me and Lance, but we live together, so that doesn’t count. And me, Pidge, and Lance, but that doesn’t count because Pidge lives in our building.”

“What Hunk is trying to say,” Allura said, primly placing a bag of pasta into the cart, “is that we miss you, Shiro.”

Shiro blinked for a few minutes, and wondered if it was irrational for him to be so surprised. Guilt panged through him, as well, because he knew that he hadn’t been spending time with his team, ever since he had been returned to them. Straight to the office and straight home from there, after all. No in between. No space to let them in. A part of him had wanted to exist that way, while another yearned for his team, but he had been living half in fear and half in suspicion ever since.

“I miss you guys, too,” he said honestly, and something in his chest trembled at the smiles that everyone gave him.

“That means that we can come over this weekend and we can party, right?” Lance said with a cheeky grin.

“Absolutely not,” Shiro said good naturedly, though something inside of him panicked at the idea. He had no idea how to explain Keith’s existence to the rest of his team, and while he knew that they would understand on some level, he didn’t want to risk it. Risk Keith.

“Aww, we haven’t even see your new place yet,” Pidge said, a little sullenly.

“You will one day, I promise,” Shiro said.

“We’re bound to hold you to that, I’m afraid,” Coran said with a smile.

“Counting on it,” Shiro said, grinning softly.

When he parted ways with them, he was laden down with more bags than he had expected, but he managed to get them up the stairs to the apartment easily enough. Keith was running again when he unlocked the door and nodded in acknowledgement at him as Shiro walked past to get into the kitchen. He put everything away and went to go change, and when he came out, Keith was eating a cookie.

That would figure.

——

When he was woken up that night by a phone call, he knew that there was something wrong.

“There’s a situation,” Allura said, voice hard and serious the way that it got when she was in the midst of a case and there was something around his spine that loosened at the sound of it. Guilt followed close behind that, of course. “Two victims, late teens, bodies found in a state that I can’t accurately describe.”

“Need to see it to believe it, huh?” Shiro said as he was buttoning up his shirt.

“You could say that,” Allura said, and there was the sound of the wind. She was walking, most likely, and he knotted his tie as quickly as possible. “Division Zero was specifically called in on this, so I need you here as soon as possible.”

“Practically out the door already, I’ll see you soon,” Shiro said, before ending the call and making his way out of the bedroom.

Keith was already sitting up, face lit up by the gentle glow of a tablet. He looked up when Shiro walked out of the room and looked at him with an almost passive expression. “Duty calls,” he intoned with a tip of his head.

“Yeah,” Shiro said, pulling his gloves out of his jacket pocket. He paused at the back of the couch, staring down at Keith, and then sparing a glance at the tablet. Catching up on the news, apparently. He was moving before he was really aware of it and his palm settled on top of Keith’s head, fingers weaving through his dark hair gently, and he carefully didn’t think about how surprised Keith was by the touch. A month of cohabitating and they rarely touched. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

Keith stared up at him, and it may have been Shiro’s imagination, but he seemed to lean into the touch, something in his jaw loosening. “Try not to get killed out there.”

The sheer morbidity of his statement startled a laugh out of Shiro, and he withdrew his hand, starting towards the door. “I’ll try not to,” he said over his shoulder.

At the scene, there was already police tape up and various cars surrounding it. Shiro flashed his badge to get past and ducked beneath the tape, making an immediate beeline over to Allura and Coran. He was the first to arrive, aside from them, but that wasn’t all too surprising.

“The killer is long gone, most likely,” Allura said without preamble, turning to Shiro with her hands on her hips. “The civilian who found the body said that the place where they were left wasn’t overly populated or often traveled, though the state which we found them in tells me that the killer wanted them to be found, despite the location.”

“Let’s take a look, then,” Pidge said, appearing at Shiro’s elbow. Lance and Hunk were in tow, looking half asleep.

“Yes, let’s,” Shiro said, following Allura as she led them towards the scene.

“Dios mio,” Lance muttered when they got close enough, and Shiro mentally agreed.

The two bodies belonged to a pair that appeared to be in their late teens, as Allura had told him. They were intertwined, but not in a manner that spoke of intimacy. The way that their limbs were positioned seemed forced and unnatural, the stillness to their bodies eerie and strange enough that it was hard to look at. That wasn’t the worst part, though.

The heads of the victims had clearly been taken off and sewn back in with big, thick, and obvious seams. Given the difference in skin tone and the abnormal ways that their heads were positioned, the heads had also been swapped between the two.

At a closer look, it appeared that their left hands had been swapped, too.

Something ominous started to coil in Shiro’s gut.

“So we’re dealing with a crazy person,” Pidge said, adjusting their glasses.

“Or someone who just really, really wanted to get their message across,” Lance said, stepping around the bodies, but not drawing any closer. “No idea what this is supposed to say, though.”

Hunk looked a little green around the edges. “This seems meaningless.”

“Murder often is,” Allura said, soft and serious and there was determination flaring in her eyes as she stared down at the victims. “So young. Too young to have met this fate.”

Shiro took a few steps closer, tilting his head this way and that. At a closer look, the two were also sewn together, which accounted for the oddness to how they were intertwined, most likely. “Given the intent that the killer had, here, we’re going to have to move fast, to avoid there being any more victims. I don’t want to immediately assume we have a serial killer on our hands, but given the, uh, uniqueness of this, this looks incredibly premeditated.”

“Let’s let the medics do their work,” Allura said, voice going hard again and Shiro turned to face her. “We’ll have to head back to the Ministry in order to fill out some paperwork and get the investigation under way. We’re at a bit of a standstill until we get word from the labs, but they’ll get back to us soon.”

“I’ve already called to have coffee and breakfast delivered to the office,” Coran said as they returned to him.

“My hero,” Lance said overdramatically, swaying and falling against Hunk. There was something dark in his expression, though, and that made something in Shiro’s gut clench.

“Alright, team,” Shiro said, clapping his hands together once. “I’ll see you guys back at the office. Try not to get lost on the way, okay?” he smiled at their three youngest to lighten the mood, and while Hunk still looked a little nauseous and Lance looked a little haunted and Pidge couldn’t stop messing with their glasses, the three of them seemed to straighten more.

Back at the office, true to Coran’s word, there was coffee and breakfast waiting for them, and they all tucked in with gusto as their computers were booting up.

Results from the lab came in as the sun was rising, citing that the bodies had been entirely drained of blood. Presumably, the deaths had been caused by decapitation, as there were no other signs of trauma on their bodies aside from the sutures and some bruising. The bruising was located on the wrists and ankles and were assumed to have been from being tied up.

“Alright, is there anyone from the past who fits this M.O. who could have escaped from jail?” Allura asked three hours later, because she had to.

“No,” Pidge droned, even as their eyes darted and they typed faster than any of them combined.

By midafternoon they were all well past exhausted, but had dragged up some semi-likely leads that they would have to pass off to another Division temporarily, considering the fact that Allura had commanded them all to go home and get some rest. A small part of Shiro wanted to argue against that, but he could feel the sluggishness in his limbs and the stickiness of his eyelids and he knew that it would be most productive to get some sleep.

Keith was sitting on the armchair when Shiro walked through the door, knees pulled up and book open on his knees. He turned slightly when the door opened and concern drifted over his expression for a few moments, before settling on something more neutral.

Shiro, already dead on his feet, dimly thought to himself that he liked it when genuine expressions appeared on Keith’s face. It had been happening more, lately.

“Go get some sleep, you look dead,” Keith said, turning back to his book. “I told you not to get yourself killed out there, didn’t I?”

“To be fair, I’m not dead,” Shiro said, before yawning so widely that his jaw cracked. “Just very, very tired. Don’t let me nap for too long, okay?” Keith grunted, which was close enough to an affirmation, and Shiro dragged himself into his bedroom. He only managed to get his jacket and tie off before falling into bed and passing out.

Shiro woke up when the sun was setting and the sky was turning a hue of purple outside and he had to squint at the long lines that had been thrown over his bedroom. It took him a few minutes, still sluggish with residual exhaustion, to take stock of himself and realize that his shoes and gloves were off. He sat up straight at that realization, knowing that he had fallen asleep with his shoes and gloves on (because maybe he was a little bit of a human disaster) but the inherent panic unknotted and soothed when he remembered that Keith was in his apartment.

Then he realized it was well past time for dinner and all but vaulted out of his bed.

He half skidded out of his bedroom, feet slipping over the wood floors, and he was entirely dumbstruck by the sight of Keith in his kitchen. Cooking. Shiro wondered for a moment why he was so shocked by the sight, since Keith had to eat something while he was at work, but it was just such a strange sight.

“You’re making dinner,” he said aloud and he wanted to apologize for the dubious tone his voice took on, but didn’t.

Keith glanced at him quickly from where he was stirring something around in a pan, and Shiro could have sworn that Keith actually looked flustered for a moment. It took a few more moments to realize that Keith actually was flustered, if the jagged way that his shoulders rose and fell and the fact that Shiro could see his ears turning red was anything to go by.

“I’m not exactly willing to starve because you’re passed out,” Keith said, and Shiro started to walk closer.

“You could’ve woken me up,” Shiro said, voice going warm, because he could only imagine that Keith hadn’t woken him because he had known how exhausted Shiro had been, and wanted to let him sleep. They both knew how little sleep he actually got, anyways. “I did say not to let me nap for very long,” he was smiling, and he knew that Keith could see his smile as he entered his periphery.

“You looked tired,” Keith said shortly, apparently determined not to look at Shiro. Something in him softened further, because that was all the affirmation that he needed.

“Thank you, Keith,” Shiro said quietly, reaching out and touching his elbow with his human fingers. It was a gentle and fleeting touch, yet Keith still stiffened at it. Shiro was ready to pull back and apologize, but then Keith abruptly relaxed, head dipping a little bit, and Shiro wasn’t sure whether or not to perceive that as relief.

“It’s just vegetables and chicken,” Keith muttered, looking at Shiro and, yeah, he definitely looked a little flustered. “Now go shower or something, dinner isn’t ready yet.”

“Sir yes sir,” Shiro said jokingly, shifting his touch so that he could squeeze Keith’s elbow before turning away and taking a shower, because it had been a very, very long day. Extremely long.

When he got back into the kitchen, Keith was sitting in front of one of two plates on the table, reading the tablet again. Shiro tried to bite down his smile at the view, and sat down in front of his own plate. The moment that he sat down, Keith leaned forwards and started to eat, and Shiro followed in his stead.

“This is delicious, Keith,” Shiro said, not surprised anymore but genuine in his compliment.

“Thanks,” Keith said, almost grunting out the word but not quite, and not looking away from his plate, either.

Shiro smiled and let them both fall into silence as they ate.

When they were done, Shiro took both of their plates and cracked the knuckles in his left hand to ready himself to tackle the dishes, and Keith seemed to take it as an allowance to say, “The case that you were called out on this morning was about the sutured victims, right?”

Shiro froze from where he was scrubbing a pan, but he recovered quickly. “That’s already all over the news? Then again, I guess it’s been a while since I was called out on that case.”

“It became a headline around noon,” Keith said, before reciting, “Death Turned into a Disturbing Game of Dolls was one of the first. There are no pictures of the crime scene, just pictures of the victims before their death.”

“That’s not surprising,” Shiro said evenly as he loaded up the dishwasher. “The crime scene was brutal and many audiences are too sensitive to be able to stomach how the bodies were found.”

“Got any leads, so far?” Keith sounded genuinely interested, and Shiro thought for a moment about how Keith had never asked about his job before in any certain terms. Then again, they had been having a slow month, ever since Keith had arrived.

Action packed weeks followed by even more of a lull. That was how an Inspector lived their life.

“Some, but they’re pretty weak,” Shiro said, turning as he dried his hands. Keith was looking at him with intrigue, and he smiled at him briefly, before his face smoothed over again. “The victims had no association with each other and they don’t seem to have any acquaintances in common, so we don’t have much to go off of right now.”

Keith nodded a few times, before standing up. “I’m gonna go pick a movie for us to watch,” he said as he turned to walk into the living room.

It took Shiro a few seconds to realize that Keith was giving him a window of time to check the apartment thoroughly before sitting down for the night, and he felt winded by the realization. Winded and impossibly thankful.

So he did just that, and when he came back out to sit down in the armchair, Keith said nothing as he started the movie.

——

Several days later their leads ran cold and Team Voltron was at a loss as to where to go next with their investigation.

“The murders seemed so deliberate,” Pidge said, going over the evidence that they had collected thus far. “I thought that because there was that chemical involved, it could have been some sort of professor or teacher that they both shared, but this supposed person doesn’t even exist.”

“Maybe the killer chose them randomly,” Lance said, spinning around in his chair and staring at the ceiling.

“Getting closer and closer to believing that,” Hunk said with his face down on his desk.

“Assume that the killer did choose randomly. If it wasn’t a crime directly against those two, then the killer was trying their best to send a message,” Allura said, eyes closed and brows furrowed. “The question is: what kind of message where they trying to send?”

As if on cue, Allura’s phone rang and she answered it briskly, putting it on speaker. Coran was on the other line, sounding half frantic, saying, “A group of civilians found what we presume to be the murderer’s latest targets.”

“Multiple again, then,” Allura said, mouth setting as she stood up and grabbed her jacket off of the back of her chair. “We’ll be right there, Coran, make sure that our transport is ready by the time we get down to the garage.” She hung up, then, and turned to the rest of them, embodying every bit of the leader that she was. “Alright, Division Zero, let’s go.”

This time, there were three victims. Heads swapped, as last time, but this time it was the right legs that were swapped between them. At a closer look, some of their fingers were swapped, as well, and the three were entangled with each other as the first two were, sewn skin to skin. The biggest difference, however, was that it looked like the eyes of one of the heads had been gouged out.

“Okay I thought that the first ones were the worst thing that I had ever seen,” Hunk said, definitely looking very, very green, “I changed my mind. This is definitely the worst thing I have ever seen, oh God, I think I’m gonna hurl.”

Shiro could empathize, and imagined that they could all empathize on some level. This wasn’t a straightforward murder. There was no blood splatter, no macabre horror. It was just horror. Bloodless bodies sewn together by a mad person, either out of boredom (a truly terrifying prospect) or to send a message.

The back of his neck prickled and he turned. All he could see were workers moving from place to place, and the medics arriving. Witnesses were somewhere in the fray, poor civilians who had found the bodies. They would have to deal with the horror for the rest of their lives, lest they went the route of memory eradication therapy, and no one deserved that. Not truly.

They all had to deal with it, but it was in the job description.

There were no leads on the bodies, the same as last time. The bodies were going to be checked for finger prints, but Shiro knew that there would be none to be found. He could tell that everyone knew that, too.

“The timeframe that the killer is working in is narrower than I thought it would be,” Allura said as they all bunched together, making way for other departments to move in and get a look at the bodies. “Which means that, presumably, the killer is going to strike again soon. Very soon.

It was hot outside, sticky midsummer heat, and they were all feeling it underneath the midafternoon sun. Allura’s face was shining with sweat, and Shiro was sure that his was the same, each and every one of Team Voltron matching. Lance had shed his jacket but hadn’t shed the serious look on his face, and Hunk was slumped against their transport, whereas Pidge was trying their best to type away at the computer.

“We’re just going to have to find the killer before they strike again,” Shiro said, mouth setting in a determined line. More people had died and had their bodies played with postmortem and while Shiro knew that there wasn’t much more they possibly could have done, he still took some of the responsibility for it. He had to.

They all had to.

It was in the job description.

All of them had known what they signed on for when they took the job. They had all taken an aptitude test after coming of age, and their personalities and otherwise had all been deeply analyzed, and they had all been determined to be best fit for a job in the Criminal Inspection Department of the Ministry of Welfare. It was an esteemed position. It wasn’t until they joined that they were, subtly, tested for their compatibility with the Bayards. Soon thereafter, they were told that they were going to be part of Division 0, the secret division of the Criminal Inspection Department which dealt with the worst of the worst, but they had all willingly taken it on. They became Paladins.

They all knew.

That never made it easier to swallow.

“It’s like,” Lance said, brows set and mouth pursed, “it’s like —— the killer is trying to get out a message by this point. They stepped it up because we didn’t pay much attention to it, maybe? But what are they trying to say?”

“Maybe they’re just sick,” Hunk mumbled, rubbing his face. “Maybe this is all meaningless and they just want to play with people’s lives as if they have the right to.”

“Meaningless,” Pidge echoed, brows furrowing. “Meaninglessness.”

“That’s what I said,” Hunk said, sounding infinitely more exhausted than he had at the beginning of the day.

Pidge abruptly straightened, their eyes lighting up in a way that could have been considered disturbing, if it had been anyone else. “I think I have a theory, but I’m going to need some time to develop it further and gather some information so I don’t sound absolutely crazy,” they said, looking from Allura to Shiro.

“Follow it,” Allura said, arms crossing. She looked vaguely proud and somewhat approving, looking down at Pidge. “We always trust your instinct, so follow whatever theory that you have, Pidge. Just get back to us as soon as possible, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pidge said with a determined nod.

When Shiro got back to his apartment that night, Keith was in the kitchen finishing up dinner.

“You didn’t have to make dinner again,” Shiro said, pulling off his gloves and tucking them into the pocket of his jacket.

“I figured that you’d be tired,” Keith said, not looking away from the stove. “I heard the news about more bodies being found, so.”

Shiro was surprised for all of two seconds before the surprise softened into something warm and almost glowing that ebbed away at the hardness that had settled in his chest after viewing the bodies that had been, once again, left in a strange and irrational sort of place. Keith had a strange and stilted sort of kindness that had taken Shiro some time to get used to, but he could recognize it easily, now.

He walked into the kitchen and stepped up behind Keith, careful to keep some space between the two of them because he knew that, sometimes, Keith didn’t like to be touched. Shiro glanced down at the pan and smiled at the sight of paella cooking in the pan. “It looks amazing. Thank you, Keith,” he said, touching his hand gently to the small of Keith’s back. He couldn’t help but smile harder at the way that Keith colored faintly.

“Go get showered so we can eat,” Keith said, leaning back and pressing against Shiro’s chest briefly, before swaying forwards again. He slanted a look over his shoulder, brow raising when Shiro lingered, and he laughed before backing away with his hands up, palms out.

“I’m going to need to buy you some clothes,” Shiro said while they ate.

“I’m fine wearing yours,” Keith said with a shrug.

“The sleeves of that tank top are practically falling off of your shoulders,” Shiro said with an undercurrent of laughter in his voice. Sometimes he could see that curl of ink on Keith’s right side when the arm holes of his shirts drooped a little too far. “You also have to keep wearing my sweatpants around the house, since none of my other pants will fit you.”

“Still perfectly functional clothes,” Keith pointed his fork at Shiro, but there was a curve to his mouth that undermined any seriousness he was trying to express. “Don’t spend money buying clothes for me.”

“No promises,” Shiro grinned and knocked his fork against Keith’s.

Keith sighed loudly and rolled his eyes, before going back to eating.

——

On Friday, after leaving the office behind, Shiro made a quick stop by a store and perused their men’s clothes for a few minutes. He racked his mind in an attempt to figure out what Keith would like to wear, and he thought back to what he had come to Shiro wearing. Black shirt and jeans. It was impossible for Shiro to tell if Keith actually liked wearing those things, or if they had just dressed him in them, but in the end Shiro just bought four black t-shirts that looked roughly Keith’s size.

After circling the small section a few times, he grabbed a pair of jeans and debated over a red jacket for a few moments, because buying a jacket was irrational when Keith literally couldn’t leave his apartment, but what about the day when he could?

In the end, he bought the jacket.

“You’re kidding me,” Keith said when Shiro walked in through the door, dinner already done and on the table and he was sitting on the kitchen counter with the tablet in his hands.

“Nope,” Shiro said sunnily, setting the bag down next to Keith. “I’m pretty sure those will fit you, but you’re probably going to want to try them on, just to be sure.”

Keith pulled the shirt out and held it up and stared at it for a grand total of three seconds before he said, “It fits,” and then setting it back in the bag.

“Try on the jeans, at least,” Shiro said, pushing the bag closer to Keith, before going off to change himself. When he came back out, Keith was wearing the jeans, and it looked like they fit well enough. Shiro didn’t necessarily have an eye for whether or not jeans fit well, but they looked flattering. “Good, I’m glad,” he said, sitting down at the table.

Keith grunted noncommittally and unbuttoned the jeans, shimmying them off his hips and Shiro looked away quickly, just barely avoiding a cough. Eventually, Keith sat down across from him and they both started eating. “Thanks,” Keith said after a few moments, pushing his food around the plate ineffectually. “How did you know that red was my favorite color?”

“I didn’t,” Shiro said honestly, “I just thought that it would look nice on you.”

That caused Keith to look up from his plate and he blinked several times, looking on the cusp of being flustered. “Well —— thanks. Again. You really didn’t have to.”

“No problem,” Shiro said, content.

His phone rang when they were settling down for their usual evening movie or television show, depending on their moods. Shiro lingered in between the kitchen and the living room to take the call, already alert and expecting Allura to be on the other line.

“Pidge’s theory is developing,” Allura said immediately when Shiro picked up. “They informed me of it soon after you left earlier and everything seems to be checking out, but we need some more time to figure out a few things. I just wanted to tell you that it seems like we have a lead, but you don’t have to come in again tonight.”

“Allura,” Shiro began.

“No, stop,” Allura said firmly, and Shiro could imagine her pacing in the small space behind her desk. “You finally just started going home at an appropriate time and not spending your every waking hour in the office. Additionally, you’ve finally stopped being so distant from us and more attuned to our everyday conversations. I don’t know what’s caused this change in your attitude, but I want you to keep it up. You deserve some time off, Shiro, and I promise that we won’t need you tonight. If any more developments happen, then I’ll call you, but for the time being I want you to stay in your apartment and relax. Understand?”

It felt like his heart was trembling against his ribcage and he wasn’t sure if it was happiness or guilt curling around his ribcage, or if it was thankfulness. “I understand, boss,” he said, smiling against the phone and hoping that Allura understood the rush of emotions he was feeling.

“Good,” Allura said briskly, though he could hear the smile in her face just before she hung up.

“Duty calls?” Keith asked from where he was sitting on the couch, pillow in his lap.

“More like the opposite,” Shiro said with a wry smile, sitting down in the armchair. “You’re stuck with me for tonight, I’m afraid.”

“What a hardship,” Keith rolled his eyes, smiling just a little too much.

——

Shiro was already rolling out of bed the moment that his phone rang on Sunday morning and he wasn’t surprised when Allura told him that more bodies had been found. He ran out the door pulling his jacket on, taking a moment to say goodbye to Keith and touch his shoulder fleetingly before he was gone.

Four bodies, this time. The killer was escalating slowly but steadily, but this time only two heads were swapped, and for the two bodies who didn’t have their heads swapped, their right and left limbs were missing entirely and they were sewn together by the shoulder. Hunk really did hurl, this time, and Lance started cursing under his breath in Spanish.

“Meaninglessness of individual identity,” Pidge said, adjusting their glasses as they stared down at the body, mouth set in a hard line. “That’s the message that the killer is trying to send, I think.”

“What?” Lance said, squinting down at Pidge.

“The heads swapped, the bodies sewn together, random parts switched between bodies. I think that the message that the killer is trying to send is that individuality is meaningless, as we can swap identities at the drop of a hat,” Pidge said academically, arms crossing. “It’s a belief that doesn’t have much of a following, especially not in Altea, but I’ve been looking into it recently. Hopefully I can narrow it down further before whoever this is can find more targets.”

“I’ve been aiding Pidge in their quest,” Allura said, “we’ve found several leads, and we need to follow them before the trail runs cold. Let’s go, everyone, we have a trail of murders to solve.”

Back at the office they gathered all the information that Pidge had gathered before setting off in separate directions to follow the leads.

Shiro ended up with Lance, who was being uncharacteristically quiet as they drove.

“I grew up in a bad area of a bad city,” Lance finally said after a few long minutes of silence, “and, uh, my brother kind of ran with the wrong people. Oldest brother, that is. My mom was always terrified that he’d end up in a body bag and when he went missing for a week, she cried and prayed for the entire time he was gone. When he turned up, he had to be identified by his dental records.”

“Lance,” Shiro said, because he knew that an apology would be meaningless.

“That was, like, forever ago,” Lance said with a hollow laugh, finally turning to look at Shiro. “It stopped hurting every day like a gunshot for me a few years ago, but every time I see a dead body ruined and dishonored, I think about my brother. This isn’t the same thing, not really, but it makes me wonder why a murderer would bother mutilating the bodies, you know? They’re already dead. You already did one of the worst things possible.”

“To make it hurt more,” Shiro said, voice not wavering, “for people like you. For their families. To really, really get their point across, in the cruelest way possible.”

“It’s fucked up,” Lance said quietly.

“It is.”

“Let’s get this fucker,” Lance said, staring out the window again.

The lead that they were following hit a dead end and when they checked in with the others, they had all hit dead ends, too. “There’s one other lead, I think,” Pidge had said over their conference call, “but I need to pinpoint a few things before we can burst in guns blazing.”

“In that case, I’m going to drop Lance off at his apartment,” Shiro said, glancing over at the aforementioned man to make sure there was no complaints about that plan.

“Go home after that yourself, Shiro,” Allura said, sounding tired and frustrated. “Pidge is going to have more than enough help from Coran.”

“Don’t forget that you’re also banned from returning to the office,” Coran said.

“Pidge has been working tirelessly,” Allura started.

“My work habits are leagues better than yours and Shiro’s, though,” Pidge said, “when we aren’t in the middle of a case. Both of you go home and get some rest, we can handle this. Hopefully by tomorrow, we’ll have something to go off of and we can finally stop whoever’s doing this.”

When Shiro pulled up to Lance’s apartment building, he parked and looked over at the other man. “Are you going to be okay tonight, Lance?”

“Yeah,” Lance said, pulling a grin to his face that could have almost been genuine. Would have been genuine, to someone who didn’t know Lance. “I got Hunk, at least, so I think I’ll be alright. The sooner we can close this case, though, the better. We can’t let this person get a hold of any more people.”

“Agreed,” Shiro said, before saying goodbye to Lance. He wanted until Lance was safely inside of the building before pulling away from the curb.

Night had already fallen by the time that he had gotten to his apartment, making it the latest that he had gotten back to the building in the almost two months since Keith had been dropped into his life. He half jogged up the stairs, distantly wondering what Keith had made for dinner, only to find that the man was missing when he walked into his apartment.

Shiro stopped dead in the doorway and listened for the sound of the shower. For the sound of anything in the apartment. When there was nothing, he quickly checked the apartment for any signs of a struggle, and checked the door while he was at it. There was absolutely nothing, but his blood still ran cold, because he knew what they were capable of.

He tore out into the hallway again, checking up and down uselessly. “Keith?” Shiro said aloud, an ominous feeling settling over his chest. “Keith?” he said louder, because the pragmatic part of him reminded himself that Keith was only bound to the apartment building, technically speaking. He could walk around the floor and up and down the stairs to his heart’s content. “Keith,” he shouted, making his way to the stairwell, trying to remember if he had seen Keith at any point while walking up to his apartment.

The door to an apartment opened in front of him as he tried to make his way to the stairs and he skidded to a stop. When he noticed that Keith was in the doorway, Shiro was half tempted to collapse from the sheer relief that had thrown itself over his shoulders, but the incredulous look on Keith’s face kept him standing, if only because it was interesting to see.

Ms. Jing appeared behind Keith a few moments later, and she smiled up at Shiro, “Oh, I’m sorry, Shiro, I borrowed your boy for a little while earlier. I needed some help with fixing one of my shelves and came to get you, but this young man answered the door after I must have knocked a dozen times! Imagine my surprise.”

“We were just wrapping up here,” Keith said, looking a little embarrassed again.

“We were,” Ms. Jing affirmed, patting Keith’s arm firmly. “Quite the handyman you have, Shiro, he can almost give you a run for your money! Such a polite young man, too. You’re both very, very lucky.”

Keith was turning pink around the edges but said nothing except, “Thank you for the tea, ma’am,” before stepping out into the hall, almost running headlong into Shiro’s chest.

“Have a good night, Ms. Jing,” Shiro said with a smile, setting a gentle hand against Keith’s back. They walked back to the apartment together as the door closed behind them, and when they were closed back into the apartment, Shiro could feel embarrassment washing over him, too. “Sorry, I don’t know why I panicked so much.”

“Don’t you?” Keith said vaguely, looking up at Shiro.

Shiro smiled in response.

“Dinner’s in the oven, I was waiting for you to eat when Ms. Jing came around,” Keith said, pulling away from Shiro’s touch and walking into the kitchen.

“She’s a lovely woman, isn’t she?” Shiro said, following behind him. “I can understand why you hesitated to answer the door, though.”

“I’ve only left your apartment a few times,” Keith said, pulling a pan out of the oven. “I never really saw anyone else when I stepped out, so I just didn’t know what to expect when I answered the door. It looked like she was alone, but I wasn’t. Sure.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Shiro said quietly, stepping close to Keith, who seemed to hesitate for a moment before subtly leaning into Shiro’s body, albeit not quite touching. “I get it, I promise. Try to use your phone next time, though, okay?”

“Go get ready for dinner,” Keith said, hip checking Shiro gently.

Shiro smiled and went.

——

When he woke up that night to Keith giving out a choked cry, Shiro rolled out of bed immediately and walked into the living room. Keith hadn’t sat up yet, evidently still lying down on the couch, and Shiro didn’t fully walk into the living room yet.

“Do you want me to sit with you?” he asked after listening to Keith struggle to get his breathing under control again.

There were a few long, drawn out moments of silence, before Keith said, “Yes.” It was more of a whisper than anything, but it seemed as loud as a gunshot in the silence of his apartment.

Shiro moved around the couch and sat down, and didn’t say a thing as Keith sat up and laid his head against his shoulder in a decisive movement. He just accommodated, and let Keith get comfortable, or as comfortable as he could get with his body remaining so tense.

“Just take deep breaths,” Shiro muttered softly.

Keith, after fifteen seconds, tried to take in some deep breaths that sounded shuddery and almost painful. After a few more minutes, though, it seemed that he had calmed down some more, his breathing back under control. A bit later, he reached over Shiro, who didn’t protest except to stiffen slightly as Keith grabbed his metal hand carefully.

Shiro watched, partly horrified and partly fascinated, as Keith ran his fingers over his metal hand, pressing against his palm and bending his fingers with care. They were slow, languorous movements that seemed almost dreamlike, except for the fact that the pressure of Keith along his left side was very, very real.

“You’re a survivor,” Keith finally said, sounding faraway.

“Barely,” Shiro said, the word hardly getting out of him. The admittance gutted him, a little bit. It left him feeling hollow and empty inside, as if he had given everything in that single word, the one that he didn’t have to say but felt obliged to say. What he hadn’t admitted to anyone else.

He had survived, yes. But barely. Just barely.

That wasn’t anything he could admit to his team.

“But you’re still a survivor,” Keith said, pressing his thumbs against the palms of his metal hand, cradling it and the warmth was nearly enough to refill everything that Shiro had just hollowed out. Then Keith was lifting his hand and ducking his head and Shiro was entirely dumbstruck by the press of Keith’s mouth against the palm of his metal hand. He could see it, and he could feel it, but it still felt entirely disjointed and impossible that he couldn’t process it for a little bit.

Keith’s ears had turned red, again. Keith was wearing his clothes. Shiro wanted to laugh for a moment over the ridiculousness of the situation. Wanted to laugh because his clothes were far too big for Keith on so many levels.

Instead he marveled in the warmth that Keith seemed to inject into him, and he leaned over to bury his face against Keith’s hair for a little bit. That little bit turned into several minutes before Shiro lifted his head again, and belatedly realized that Keith was still tracing his fingers over Shiro’s hand.

“Try to get some sleep,” Shiro said, quiet as he could.

“You, too,” Keith said, fingers not quite stopping, but slowing. Dragging, now.

Shiro intertwined their fingers and fell asleep quietly.

——

“Suspect broke away down a side hall,” Shiro said into the communication line, skidding down the hall and trying to go after the murderer as quickly as possible.

“Be careful, Shiro,” Allura said sternly, “Lance and Hunk are trying to catch up with you right now, but they’re quite a ways behind you.”

“How’s the victim?” Shiro asked, trying to speed up as the victim made a sharp turn.

“Still breathing,” Pidge said grimly, “they’re going to have to get to a hospital as soon as possible though. Take the guy down, Shiro.”

“I’m trying my best,” Shiro said.

The killer was a, presumably, Caucasian male in his early-20s who worked in the twenty-four-hour café on the Altea University college campus, which explained why all of his targets were apparently in their late teens. He seemed to target his victims in the middle of the night, drugging them and dragging them off to hide them in the back until he could transport them elsewhere.

The fact that the café was right next to the library, which had an extensive basement, was something that they had taken into account, but the fact that it was so much of a maze was irritating. Especially when the murderer was dragging Shiro on a wild goose chase, essentially.

Shiro took another sharp turn and skidded to a stop when he stumbled into a large and open room. His grip tightened on his gun for a moment as he started forwards slowly. There were only a few places to hide in the room, as it was full of what appeared to be generators. For a brief moment, there was movement to his left and he twisted sharply to look that way, and as he turned a gunshot sounded behind him.

He twisted quickly and two things happened in quick succession: the bullet made contact with his metal arm, meaning that he felt no direct pain though the resonating contact made his teeth grit, and he fell over a trip wire.

He rolled, trying to gain his footing again, but he stumbled as another gunshot boomed through the echo of the room, making contact with his arm once more. This time, though, it was dangerously close to where his natural arm met the metal, and he twisted at the contact. Something collided with his shoulder and he sprawled on his back as a result, skidding back several inches.

The murderer was standing over him and kicked the gun away, far off to the side. Shiro could hear it skidding against the ground and make contact with one of the generators. Or the wall. He couldn’t tell, since he was focusing pretty hard on the gun being pointed at his head. There was a foot on his chest, too.

Somewhere not too far away, an explosion sounded.

“What did you do to them?” Shiro said, voice hard and unforgiving.

“Shut up,” the murderer said, the gun steady in his hand. “Look at you, the hero of the hour, Takashi Shirogane. Not the most low-profile person in Altea, are you? Seems like you’ve ruined my plans for the night, which I just can’t have,” the man was starting to smile, edging towards mania. “I guess you’ll just have to do for my next piece, then, won’t you? It’s a shame to ruin your face with a bullet hole in between your eyes, but I guess that’ll send even more of a message, won’t it? Even the great Captain Shirogane will not exist as an individual.”

“Do you monologue to all of your victims?” Shiro asked, because he couldn’t quiet resist.

“Not at all,” the murderer said, smiling widely. “I guess you’re just special, just as everyone claimed you were before, you know, the incident. That wasn’t publicized very much, was it? So hush hush. Suspicious, really,” His head tipped and he looked considering, before changing his target and shooting Shiro’s right hand.

It curled instinctively, but he didn’t scream. It didn’t hurt, after all.

“Amazing,” the smile was spreading, “maybe I’ll give it to someone once I take it off of you, since I have no use for a metal——”

He didn’t get to finish that sentence. Not when another gunshot resounded and Shiro watched with morbid fascination as a bullet entered and exited the man’s head, blood following after the bullet, as if desperate to remain with it. The murder stayed upright for several long seconds before swaying, and another figure crashed into him, causing the man to slump over to the side.

It took Shiro longer than he wanted to admit to realize that it was Keith standing over him, staring down at the dead man. He was wearing the red jacket, too.

“Keith, what,” Shiro started, moving to sit up, unsure whether to give his attention to the dead murder or to give all of it to Keith himself.

“A note flashed across the television screen after you left,” Keith said, looking semi shaken but mostly annoyed in true Keith fashion, brandishing his phone for Shiro to look at. “I wasn’t —— I wasn’t sure what to do, but I couldn’t just stay there.”

We promise that he’ll die if you aren’t there.

“Keith,” Shiro said, tearing his gaze from the note and staring up at Keith, who was staring at the dead man.

After a few more moments, Keith seemed to shake himself and turn back to Shiro, offering him a hand up. Shiro lurched as he stood up, and they ended up chest to chest. “I wasn’t stopped on my way here,” Keith said quietly, despite the fact that they were the only two in the room.

“You came all the way here for me,” Shiro said, a little disbelievingly.

“Don’t be stupid,” Keith muttered, corners of his mouth tightening. “Of course I did.”

“Of course,” Shiro echoed, placing a gentle hand on Keith’s shoulder.

Keith’s head lolled for a moment, dipping down for a moment before looking up, and there was an intense determination in his eyes. “I told you not to get yourself killed, didn’t I?” he said, rough and irate. Shiro was caught up, for a moment, by the thought that Keith was, once more, giving his full and absolute attention, and his heart trembled with it. He almost completely missed the moment when Keith leaned up and in as a result of his distraction, but his brain caught up a few seconds before their mouths slotted together.

It was a simple and closed mouth kiss that Shiro leaned down into. The kiss didn’t quite feel like absolution, but it felt sincere and firm and his gloved fingers grazed over Keith’s cheek for a moment, before they pulled away as once.

Not the most romantic place for a first kiss.

“Try that again when we aren’t standing next to a dead body,” Shiro said, cupping Keith’s cheek briefly.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Keith said wryly. “That explosion before was me, by the way. I needed to distract your team, but I promise none of them got hurt.”

“I trust you,” Shiro said, leaning down to brush his mouth against Keith’s cheek, maybe a hair too close to the corner of his mouth. “You have to get out of here, though, before the others arrive.”

“How are you going to explain the dead body to them?” Keith asked, curling his fingers into Shiro’s jacket.

“Suicide, probably,” Shiro said, because the angle that Keith shot the murderer at would have been too difficult to explain away as his own work, and he couldn’t give Keith away. “I’ll have to do some configuring, but it’ll be fine. Just get out of here, okay?”

Keith nodded, and squeezed his hand once, before turning and running off.

“Suspect’s dead,” Shiro said over the communication line, before kneeling next to the body.

Shiro had a few minutes to swap their guns for the sake of realism and move the dead man’s arm. A part of him felt a measure of guilt over what he was doing, but then he thought about all of the people that the man had killed and what he had done to their bodies, at what that had done to Lance, and decided that he didn’t feel all too guilty about it.

“We heard gun shots, are you okay, Shiro?” Hunk asked, glancing at the body and shivering a little bit. A subtle shiver.

“I’m fine,” Shiro said, waving his right hand once, “he apparently had a fascination for my metal arm, but when I got him cornered he dove for my gun and ended up shooting himself.”

“He got off too easily,” Lance said bitterly, squinting down at the body and looking like he was highly tempted to kick the man.

Shiro could sympathize in some ways.

Later on, after he gave his statement multiple times and dragged himself into the office to fill out the necessary paperwork and cited even more times the story behind the suspect’s suicide, the sun was just starting to rise when he dragged himself back to his apartment.

He wasn’t surprised to find Keith waiting up for him, but he was a little relieved. Or a lot relieved. The sheer amount of exhaustion that he felt made it a little hard to figure out exactly what he was feeling.

Keith stared at him for a few moments before standing up and walking over to Shiro. He swayed up onto his toes and Shiro almost wanted to laugh at the reminder of how small Keith was, compared to him, but he managed to choke the laugh back and leaned down to meet him for a kiss. Shiro was a little dazed and not fully awake, so he probably leaned too far into the kiss and his mouth was just a little too slack, but it was a lovely kiss all the same.

Then again, he was probably biased.

“You’re half asleep,” Keith muttered against his mouth, before grabbing his hands and leading him towards the bedroom.

“You couldn’t text me,” Shiro said as he went, just to be annoying.

“Shut up, Shiro,” Keith said without heat.

Shiro let Keith pull his gloves off and shrugged his own jacket off, managing to make his way over to his closet to hang it up. He unbuttoned his shirt and fumbled halfway, but managed to power through. Keith was pressed against his side, rifling through his closet, and Shiro got his shirt and tie off, hanging them up, as well.

Keith looked distracted for a moment, staring down at his abdomen, and Shiro was caught up with the urge to cover the scarring that lined his body, before Keith shoved a bundle of fabric right into his face. “Here, sleep in this,” he said, and when Shiro moved his hand down, he was charmed by how awkward Keith looked.

“Thank you,” Shiro said genuinely, leaning down to kiss Keith’s forehead.

“Stop that,” Keith said, though he didn’t quite sound put off. “get some sleep.”

Shiro laughed softly and changed, before falling into bed and passing out immediately.

——

In the week following the end of the case, the entire team settled back into their usual schedule. Allura answered a few questions at the press directed towards them and they finished their paperwork and the case was shut and locked away, as they all were, eventually.

Evidence overwhelmingly pointed to Aston William Stanford as the murderer under all accounts. In between them catching him trying to grab his latest victim, the raid on his flat revealed that he had already killed two more in preparation for his next “piece” and that his flat was full of the necessary chemicals and surgical sutures. There were no apparent accomplices.

Shiro wasn’t sure if he believed that. He stared at that file a few more times.

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Pragmatism demanded that he let it go, however. There wasn’t a single thing that indicated that Stanford had an accomplice, as his family could have supplied him the chemicals due to their foot in a laboratory products business, including the reagents Stanford would have needed to make the chemicals that were in his apartment. Surgical sutures were easy enough to buy online, and all signs pointed to Stanford carrying out his horrors on his own.

Yet there was the note. The note, and the question of what drove Stanford into the business of murder. He was sweet, albeit a little odd, all of his friends and family said. Not the type to do this sort of thing.

He was soft enough in an area nearby his heart that he wanted to believe that, but he wasn’t sure if he could. If he was meant to.

But there was the note.

“It just appeared on the screen in the middle of my run,” Keith said one night when they were sitting on the couch, not quite pressed together, but close. Keith was messing with Shiro’s hand again, gently, and this time it was his human hand. “When I read it, I grabbed the jacket and ran.”

“It would’ve been safer to stay put,” Shiro said, because he had to, lifting his right hand. He hesitated for a moment, fingers hovering an inch away from Keith’s face, before the man scoffed and leaned into the touch.

“What, and leave you to die? I told you not to get yourself killed, after all,” Keith said, eyes sliding shut as Shiro cupped Keith’s cheek properly.

“You risked yourself to get to me,” Shiro muttered, still a little bit in awe.

“You lied for me,” Keith countered, turning his head and kissing Shiro’s palm again.

Shiro just had to kiss him properly, after that.

The thing was this: Keith could leave his apartment, now. Or, more like Keith could have left his apartment all along, in spite of the fact that he didn’t technically exist and should have been stopped the moment that he passed beneath a scanner that checked his identity. Shiro didn’t know how that was supposed to work, and the dark and ugly thing in his gut told him that they had pulled more strings than that, but it was the reality that they lived with.

Maybe a small part of Shiro had expected Keith to leave immediately.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t a maybe, and it wasn’t a small part.

So when he woke up later that day after Keith had put him to bed to find the man making dinner, he hadn’t been able to suppress the surprise that he felt. Keith’s reaction to that surprise had been to roll his eyes and tell him to get ready for dinner.

Yet he was half waiting for the other shoe to drop, anyways.

When he came back from the office one evening to an empty apartment, something caught between distress and grief lodged itself into his ribs. Then Keith came back a few minutes later and fixed him with an incredulous expression when Shiro touched him almost reverently. “I just went to the store,” he said, brows furrowing.

Shiro kept coming back to his apartment to Keith lounging on the couch or in the kitchen making dinner, more often than not wearing Shiro’s own clothing. He didn’t want to admit how much of a relief it was to open his door and find Keith sitting inside.

Keith probably knew, anyways, given the fact that he rolled his eyes every time Shiro walked through the door and moved to kiss him shortly before telling him that he was being ridiculous. In various different ways.

Regardless, Shiro was slowly learning to cherish every moment that they spent together, because he wasn’t sure when Keith was going to leave, for good.

A part of him knew that he was focusing so hard on whatever he had with Keith partly to stop himself from agonizing and obsessing over the fact that he knew that Stanford hadn’t been working alone, but if he told anyone his theory, they would have been suspicious. Even his own team. His paranoia wasn’t broadcasted or well known, but his team knew, as they always knew.

“Shiro, it’s okay,” one of them would say, concern drenching their expression, “it’s over, he’s dead and gone, you’re safe now.” Dead and gone the way that Pidge’s dad and brother were.

He wasn’t gone, though. They weren’t gone.

Keith was living proof of that.

Don’t get him wrong, though. Shiro was also focusing so hard on whatever was between Keith and himself because he wanted it, and it was a burgeoning sort of thing. It had been a while since Shiro had craved any sort of intimacy and even longer since he had felt secure enough to express it in any capacity, but Keith demanded it in quiet ways. Had accidentally barreled down his walls and touched his hand and didn’t see it as anything inherently odd.

Shiro had problems accepting his metal arm as part of his body, but Keith did it without hesitation, and reassured him with gentle touches.

So, the fact that he wanted to protect their fledgling relationship was understandable. Ergo, the knocking on his door on the Saturday following the wrap up of the case immediately set him on edge from where he was sitting on the couch waiting for Keith to be done with his shower.

He took a few deep breaths before standing up and phasing the door to check whoever was on the other side. The shock of seeing his team there was almost enough to bowl him over, admittedly, and he momentarily struggled with the idea of opening the door, but he knew that he didn’t have the will in him to shut his team out again. If he didn’t open his door to them, then they would grow steadily more concerned over him once more, and he wasn’t sure if he could handle it this time.

No one used their phone anymore, apparently.

“We’re really, very sorry for the intrusion, Shiro,” Allura said diplomatically, even smiling apologetically, “but they insisted.”

“Hey, Shiro said that we would see the inside of his apartment eventually,” Lance said with an expansive shrug, “so, Hunk and I figured, why not just come on over? It’s been a month since we wrapped up that last case and we could do with some celebration, don’t you think?” He brandished several grocery bags with a grin.

“This was mostly Lance’s idea,” Hunk said, sounding somewhat nervous but smiling all the same, “but I figured, hey, why not? I would love to cook for you guys again, it’s been a while since anyone but Lance and Pidge ate my food.”

“I pointed out the fact that we’re cutting into your own personal time, but no one listened to me,” Pidge said, holding a few bags and sounding entirely unapologetic.

“This, perhaps, is not the best way to go about having a team dinner,” Coran said, smiling crookedly, “but it sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”

“Uh, guys——” Shiro’s head was spinning a little bit, trying to keep up with what was happening.

“C’mon, let’s get this party started!” Lance said, twisting past Shiro, who moved out of the way automatically. Everyone started to file in after him, and Shiro just watched them with raised brows.

His heart felt tender at the idea of his team wanting to spend time with him so much that they would pop over uninvited. Not the proper response, maybe, but this wasn’t something that they normally did to begin with. At his old apartment, everyone had been given a free pass to come and go as they pleased, and when he had moved the former policy still technically stood, but his team always knew when to give him some space.

Over a year of space, at that.

So he felt a little molten on the inside, knowing that his team had missed him so much.

Then Keith stepped out of his bedroom toweling his damp hair and wearing Shiro’s clothes and he remembered why he didn’t exactly want his team to be there, at the moment. Shiro wondered, dizzily, if it was more incriminating that Keith had chosen to wear one of Shiro’s bigger shirts that just really drooped on him, hanging off one of his shoulders. Keith, for his part, said absolutely nothing and just stared at the team while Lance’s rambling started to taper off as they all stared at Keith, in return.

“Uhh, Shiro,” Pidge said slowly, “why is there a strange man in your apartment?”

“Wearing your clothes?” Lance said, voice going strangely high.

“Oh, my,” Allura said, pressing a hand to her mouth, and Shiro suspected that she was smiling far too hard for the situation.

“Guys, this is Keith,” Shiro said, shutting the door and quickly making a beeline around his team to stand next to the man, “he’s my——” he hesitated for a moment.

“Boyfriend,” Keith said as he let the small towel come to a rest around his neck. “I’m his boyfriend.”

Shiro could have sworn that his heart was about to explode. In a good way.

“What?” Lance’s voice, somehow, got even higher. “Whoa, wait, hold up, one second —— Shiro, why didn’t you tell us you had a boyfriend?”

“Shiro has a right to his privacy, Lance,” Allura said, and Lance winced when her hand darted out to hit him in the back. Shiro couldn’t suppress a smile.

“It never really came up,” Shiro said with a shrug, swaying closer to Keith.

“It’s great to meet you,” Coran said enthusiastically.

Lance coughed and shifted a bit before saying, “Yeah, it’s nice to meet you, Keith. Hope you’re ready for the third degree,” he said with a wide smile.

“Lance,” Allura said, smacking him in the back again, but between Pidge squinting at Keith judgingly and Hunk tilting his head this way and that, Shiro knew that dinner was going to be interesting.

Everyone migrated towards the kitchen eventually, Hunk mentioning that he would have to get started with the food sooner rather than later, and Shiro moved to follow them. Fingers curling around his pinky finger caused him to stop, however, and he turned immediately.

Keith looked flustered and Shiro could feel something in his stomach clench at the sight of him and he pulled forwards automatically, any notion of personal space between them practically dissolving, though they still weren’t quite touching. Shiro oftentimes wasn’t sure when Keith was okay with being touched and when he only wanted to be touched on specific places, and he was insistently keen on making sure that Keith was comfortable at all times.

“Sorry,” Keith said quietly, leaning forwards as if drawn to Shiro, as if he were gravitating towards him. “I wasn’t really sure what to say, but I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Shiro shifted his hand and curled his fingers around Keith’s, tugging at his hand playfully and gently, “We’re whatever you want us to be, Keith.”

Keith stared at him for a few moments, “What do you want this to be?”

He should have stopped being surprised by Keith ages ago, really. Over two months of living together and Shiro was still being caught off guard by Keith and everything that he was, somehow. The question was only strange to him given the fact that the two of them had been on the same page, at least in regards to their relationship. “Ask me that when we don’t have company,” he finally said, before leaning down and pressing a lingering kiss against Keith’s temple.

When he turned around, Lance and Pidge were staring at them from the kitchen, and Shiro could feel his face warm a little bit. Keith laughed quietly next to him, and he glanced down and back for a moment, smiling when he saw that Keith was covering his mouth and quickly sobering.

“So, where are you from, Keith?” Pidge asked later that night.

“Not from around here,” Keith responded with a shrug.

“Oh, yeah?” Lance said, leaning forwards and into Keith’s space. “Where are your folks?”

Shiro was prepared to tell Lance to back off a little bit when Keith said, “I’m an orphan,” simple as anything, in true Keith fashion. Blunt, straightforward, and a little shocking. Kind of like jumping into cool water. “I ended up in Altea when I was younger, that’s all.”

“Ohh,” Lance said slowly, leaning away from Keith slowly and swaying backwards a little bit. Hunk had to make sure that he didn’t fall over.

“So, Keith, what do you do?” Pidge continued, undeterred.

“Alright, that’s enough of the third degree,” Allura said, sternly looking at Pidge and Lance in turn, “I understand that you two feel very protective towards Shiro, but stop bothering Keith.”

“Thank you, Allura,” Shiro said, touching Keith’s elbow briefly.

By the time everyone left, it was late and Pidge had stopped borderline glaring at Keith, though they were still clearly wary of him. Lance had, somehow, gotten into no less than three verbal arguments with Keith, because Keith apparently didn’t have the best impulse control over his sarcasm, to which Shiro couldn’t help but laugh a little bit. Hunk, Allura, and Coran got along with Keith far better, though from a distance, as Keith didn’t talk all that much.

It was, all in all, pretty much how Shiro expected Keith meeting his team would go.

When the door finally closed and Shiro locked it, he exhaled loudly and turned back to the couch, walking around to the back of it. “You okay?” he asked, and when Keith nodded he wrapped his arms around Keith’s shoulders and pressed his face against his hair.

“So that was your team,” Keith said, reaching up to touch Shiro’s wrist.

“Yeah. What do you think?” Shiro asked.

“They were interesting,” Keith said, tangling their fingers together loosely. “A bunch of misfits.”

Shiro laughed and squeezed Keith a little tighter, “Yeah, that’s what we are. Do you still want to watch a movie tonight?”

“Not really,” Keith said, before twisting around and kneeling up. Shiro straightened slightly with the movement but stayed close enough that they were still nose to nose. “Are you going to answer the question that I asked earlier?”

He bumped their noses together gently, “I want us to be us,” Shiro said, because it was the easiest way to word it.

“Specific,” Keith said dryly.

Shiro knew that they both knew what he meant, though. He squeezed Keith briefly, “What about you?”

Keith grunted and leaned forward for a kiss, before sitting back and giving Shiro a well and truly unamused expression. “Don’t be an idiot, Shiro,” he said, before twisting off of the couch and walking into the living room. “Is there any ice cream left?”

He watched him go and smiled softly.

——

“I don’t trust him,” Pidge announced on Monday morning, unabashed and straightforward.

“Neither do I, that guy’s super weird, Shiro. Like, really weird. Kinda mean, too, and sort of arrogant in a really annoying way?” Lance said, arms crossing while he pouted a little bit.

“Well, I trust him,” Shiro said evenly, fixing both of them with a stern look, “Keith is a little prickly by nature, but he grows on you quickly. You guys also completely blindsided both of us last night.”

“And we do apologize for crashing your date night,” Allura said, glaring visciously at Pidge and Lance, “Keith seems like a perfectly lovely man, Shiro, I’m very happy for you.”

Shiro was tempted, for a moment, to mention that every night was technically date night for them, but it would have been rather hard to explain the fact that they were technically living together. Also, did it count as date night when they just weren’t touching, sometimes? It definitely counted as date night when they were cuddling, probably, but sometimes Keith wanted to sit by himself and sometimes Shiro needed some space, too.

“Yeah, I mean, Keith seems like a good guy,” Hunk said from where he was seated at his desk, shrugging when Lance squawked in his general direction. “Look, man, the only reason you don’t agree is because you got a little fighty with him, I’m pretty sure.”

“We don’t even know him,” Pidge tried to argue.

“Yes, but I know him,” Shiro said firmly in what they termed his Leader Voice that left no room for arguments, “and I’m the one in a relationship with him. Pidge, you’re biased because you’re protective of me, which I do appreciate, and Lance, you’re biased because this was a surprise to you and you don’t appreciate it being a surprise, but it’s unfair to judge Keith based on being around him for a few hours after you completely surprised him by showing up at my apartment. You guys are my team and my friends and I value your opinion on people who I get close to, but I assure you that Keith is a good man and I care about him very much. He cares about me a lot, too.”

Enough to kill someone for him. They didn’t need to know that, though.

Everyone fell silent after that for a few moments before drifting back to their jobs. Pidge and Lance still seemed a bit put out, but they warmed back to him by the end of the day.

On his way back to the apartment, he texted Keith about going out that night because they could, and while Keith didn’t text back he was still changed and ready to go when Shiro got home. “Still not going to use your phone much?” Shiro asked with an undercurrent of laughter, letting Keith hook a finger in his belt loop and pull him close.

“Shut up,” Keith said, smiling up at him but not kissing him.

It felt like they had sunk into a bubble of a world, something comfortable and cushy that Shiro could breathe with and while he still checked over his shoulder and checked the apartment twice a day from floor to ceiling, it was as if there was something warm glowing in his body. There was a softness to everything that Shiro had experienced once or twice before, but it felt all the more intense this time, and he imagined that it was because the world that he had existed in before had been hard and severe and jagged and Keith, for all of his prickly attitude, seemed to soften it.

Keith crawling into his bed in the middle of the night shouldn’t have begun to pop the bubble, but it did. More specifically, it was the look on his face.

“I’ve been remembering some things,” Keith said, soft and hushed and a little strained, looking worn and exhausted and Shiro wanted to pull him into his arms and just hold him until the lines on his face smoothed.

Instead, he remained quiet, giving Keith the entirety of his attention and letting him continue at his own pace.

Keith touched his shoulder gently and then drifted his touch lower, skimming along the edge of where his organic arm met metal and Shiro couldn’t help but shiver beneath the touch, the sheer intimacy of it, but the faraway look on Keith’s face made him still once more. He remained quiet for a few more minutes, before grabbing at the hem of Shiro’s shirt and shoving it up, pulling it back and holding it there to bare his stomach and Shiro instinctively knew what he was looking at.

“I have that same symbol,” Keith’s voice was edging close to reverence, yet there was a bleakness in his tone that said otherwise. Holding Shiro’s shirt in place, Keith reached for his own shirt and pulled it up and Shiro stared at the curl of ink that was intimately familiar to him, because it was carved on his stomach. Had been carved into his stomach. On Keith’s body, it was inked. When Shiro reached out to touch it, Keith jumped, and Shiro could feel the raise of skin indicating a scar beneath it, too. “I don’t know why I have it.”

“It’s their symbol,” Shiro said, barely audible to his own ears.

“I don’t know what they did to me,” Keith’s face was twisting and Shiro wanted to run his fingers over it gently to make that expression go away, but he kept his hand on Keith’s side and didn’t move the other. “I only remember purple and black and flashes of pain, maybe, but nothing is solid. Nothing —— nothing that I remember seems real. Like they took it from me.”

“Keith,” Shiro uttered, letting his arm drop in a silent invitation.

It was taken after a few moments of hesitance and Keith settled against his left side, right arm slinging across Shiro’s body so that Keith could trace along where his arm met metal again. “I am an orphan, I think,” Keith said, and Shiro tangled their legs together gently. “Or —— I’m not sure, Nothing’s clear, I can’t remember anything from before I ended up here, with you. I don’t even know my last name.”

“You could take mine,” Shiro said quietly, even though the notion was ridiculous because they had known each other for four months, maybe, but Keith laughed weakly, which was the goal in the end.

“Shut up, Shiro,” Keith said, moving his hand to pinch at Shiro’s side gently.

“I didn’t remember either,” Shiro said after a few minutes of silence, “not for a while after I got away. I’m not sure if they made me forget or if I repressed the memories, but I didn’t get a proper grasp on what happened to me while I was there until months after.”

“How did you deal with it?” Keith asked.

“In hindsight, I didn’t really deal with it,” Shiro said honestly, laughing when Keith jerked as if in disbelief. “I didn’t quite accept the fact that there were gaps in my memory, and when I did remember it was always at inopportune times. I put the rest of my team at risk sometimes, because I didn’t know how to handle something like this.”

“A crack in the armor,” Keith intoned.

“I need you to know that I’m here for you, though,” Shiro said, squeezing Keith tightly. “You don’t need to struggle through this alone.”

Silence settled between them again and it stretched and sprawled and Shiro closed his eyes to sleep when Keith said, “Thank you, Shiro,” and they both drifted off together.

When he woke up, he was spooned behind Keith, and held him close for as long as he dared.

——

Keith was wearing his hair up into a bun when Shiro came back to the apartment one night and Shiro couldn’t resist pressing a kiss to the nape of his bare neck. He laughed warmly when Keith jumped and glared at him without any of the venom any of his true glares carried and kissed his forehead, too.

It was nice to half pretend that the bubble could still exist.

——

A few weeks later, there was a string of unusual disappearances that warranted Division Zero to step in purely because of the nature of the disappearances. All of the victims’ homes were still recently lived in despite people citing that they hadn’t been seen for weeks, and they maintained a strong online presence in spite of their apparent status as being missing.

The bodies of the missing were found during week two of the case in the floor of the apartment of the presumed killer that they tracked via the evident online connection that the victims had. Pidge had scoffed and said, “The killer covered their tracks well enough, but not well enough that I can’t get past and figure out where they actually were.”

They took the suspect in alive, and Shiro caught a glimpse of a curl of ink and it felt like the bottom of his stomach had dropped out again.

A month after that, snow was falling and Shiro was chasing a murderer again. This time, the killer had been hanging the eyeballs of their victims in high public places, much to plenty of civilian’s horror. The bodies had, presumably, been melted down with acid, and were unable to be retrieved.

Shiro ended up cornered again and Keith appeared to kick the murderer in the side, practically launching him. The suspect ended up with half of his arm in the acid that he had dissolved the body in and screamed whilst Shiro reminded Keith to run. As Keith fled the scene, Shiro dragged the killer out of the acid and threw him on the floor, reading him his rights.

Later that same night, after Keith had burned the note that he had gotten, he had kissed the scar on Shiro’s stomach and whispered, “It’s like they’re trying to test me, or something. Like —— like they’re testing a leash.”

“They don’t have you,” Shiro said helplessly, burying his hand into Keith’s hair, cradling his head gently. “They can’t have you.”

“You have me,” Keith mouthed the words against his skin more than anything, before pressing a kiss against another one of Shiro’s scars and drifting downwards. His hair was getting ridiculously long.

There was a lull after that.

Well, apart from the murderer from the Eyeball Case turning up dead in his cell. Something to the right of his heart trembled when he heard the news.

Something was building.

——

Everyone, meaning Allura and Coran, convinced him to bring Keith to the Ministry of Welfare holiday party, except they all hated the holiday party, so instead he brought Keith to Allura’s apartment for their team holiday celebration.

“Ugh, why is Keith here?” Lance asked, because he was still a little sore about their first meeting.

“Keith and Shiro are in a relationship, Lance, get over it,” Allura said while walking past him, carrying a plate of cookies to set out on the table.

“Still?” Lance whined.

Keith raised an eyebrow and said, “That’s what a relationship tends to be, shockingly enough.”

Pidge was staring at Keith with a set mouth before shaking themselves out and seeming to relax, which Shiro was glad for. Later on, when they had exchanged gifts and after Lance had loudly asked where a present from Keith was and after Keith offhandedly offered to spar and ended up kicking Lance’s ass, much to everyone’s amusement, Pidge asked why Shiro and Lance hadn’t exchanged gifts yet, to which Shiro could only say that they were waiting until later.

“Private gifts, huh?” Lance said suggestively, eyebrows wiggling.

“Careful, you’re going to give yourself whiplash with that attitude 180,” Keith said dryly, and Lance complained at him to shut up.

When they were all preparing to leave and Lance was distracting Keith with some listless argument, Pidge sidled up next to him and Shiro looked down at them, smiling questioningly. “He really makes you happy?” Pidge asked, brows furrowing.

“Yes,” Shiro said without hesitation, looking over at where Keith and Lance were arguing, and he didn’t want to know what his face had done looking at Keith, given the fact that Pidge was smiling far too widely. “Keith makes me very, very happy, Pidge.”

They walked home because they had walked to Allura’s place and there was snow falling slowly from the sky and Keith pressed close to Shiro’s side, wearing the winter jacket that he had bought him near the middle of November. It was red.

Their hands were intertwined loosely between their bodies and Keith didn’t complain as Shiro hummed holiday songs quietly as they walked.

“I wasn’t sure what to get you,” Keith said as the sun was rising on Christmas Day, lying in his bed and looking sleep tousled while his fingers traced the seam where his skin touched metal. “I also don’t have my own money.”

Shiro rolled over and pushed himself up onto his elbow, smiling down at Keith, “It wasn’t a requirement to get me a present, anyways.”

“I wanted to,” Keith said, as if it were as simple as that.

Maybe it should have been.

He thought about the box that was sitting in his bedside drawer and considered getting it out to give it to Keith, though he thought better of it. If nothing else, Keith would get a little irate over the fact that he couldn’t reciprocate the gift, and Shiro wanted to avoid that. Instead, he absentmindedly traced shapes up and down Keith’s bare arm, humming holiday songs beneath his breath as morning stretched and shadows shifted.

——

“Why don’t you just move somewhere else?” Keith asked after New Year’s, half curled into himself on the couch and staring at the television. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what he was thinking about, and something sticky between his ribs wanted him to curl himself around Keith and take those bleak thoughts away.

Keith didn’t want to be touched, though.

“This apartment building has some of the highest security measures in all of Altea,” Shiro said, looking at Keith even though he knew that Keith wouldn’t return his gaze. “Not government level security, but higher security than most residence buildings have. If they can get to me here, they can get to me anywhere.”

It was a truth, but it was a truth that made Keith curl into himself more. It made something inside of Shiro shrivel, too, and he irrationally wanted to apologize. He didn’t.

“Why did you stay in Altea?” Keith finally said after several more minutes of silence. After a beat his mouth curled and he smiled, but it was humorless and distant and Shiro wanted to kiss it off of his face. “Well, I already know the answer to that. Your team, right?”

“They’re the closest thing to family that I have,” Shiro said honestly.

“I guess I don’t understand that,” Keith said, sounding a little hollow.

Shiro wanted to say _But you have me_ and he wanted to say _What am I to you?_ and he wanted to say _Look at me, please_ but he said none of those things. Instead, he looked away from Keith and said, “You will one day.”

Across the living room, Keith laughed, and Shiro wanted to fill Keith with all of the things that he felt, he wanted to crawl inside of him so there would be no more emptiness, he wanted Keith to let him in so he would never have to sound so vacant ever again. The words were on the tip of his tongue but he didn’t say them, because he knew that Keith didn’t want to hear them.

Shiro knew that Keith wouldn’t know what to do with them.

So he tucked the words behind his heart and against his lungs and breathed with them.

——

Keith disappeared midway through January. He took his red jacket, one pair of clothes, and his knife with him.

The day that he left, it was snowing and Shiro had returned to an empty apartment and felt a familiar pang of worry at the state of the apartment, but he checked over it thoroughly before starting dinner. He made enough for two and turned on television to wait out Keith coming home and it was midnight before he really knew it and that worry seeded inside of his chest and began to blossom into anxiety.

He grabbed his phone and called Keith, only to hear the sound of a phone vibrating on the coffee table, and he stared at it for a few long moments before hanging up on his end.

For a few long moments, he was tempted to laugh, because of course Keith would forget to bring his phone with him anywhere that he went. The phone was always a second thought to him, and Shiro had always imagined that it was because Keith wasn’t used to having a phone, and the thought always made him want to vomit.

There was no inherent need to panic, technically speaking, because Keith didn’t care about his phone much and rarely used it, anyways, and in addition to that, Shiro knew very well that Keith could take care of himself. So, there was no need to panic.

When he woke up the next morning to a still empty apartment he tried to soothe his concern and went into work with a smile and acted like everything was okay.

Shiro was pretty well versed in that, nowadays.

When it stretched into five days the anxiety had blurred into a dull panic and he was genuinely concerned every time that Allura’s phone rang, because it could have been another call about a case that they would have to take. The chance that the call would be in relation to Keith or finding his body was unlikely, in the grand scheme of things, but Shiro learned to expect the worst a long time ago.

“Shiro, you seem kind of out of it recently,” Pidge said one evening, when Shiro had lingered around the office just a little too long.

“Do I?” Shiro said with a smile, tearing his gaze away from his computer monitors.

“Yeah,” their head tilted and Pidge’s mouth pursed with worry, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Pidge, don’t worry about it,” Shiro said, hoping that he was projecting reassurance, because Pidge was like a little sibling to him and worrying them more than necessary, worrying them at all, wasn’t what he wanted.

Pidge squinted a little bit, “You aren’t as good of a liar as you think you are, you know?” That startled a brief, mostly surprised, laugh out of Shiro, but Pidge continued, “The fact that you weren’t okay for a long time was really obvious, even though you tried to hide it. You started getting better when Keith entered your life, I assume, but you’re starting to get distracted and distant again and it’s worrying and I wish that you would just admit when you’re not okay.”

Shiro was taken aback, though there was a small bud of pride in his chest, because Pidge was always so straightforward and strong. Even in the face of their father and brother being taken away, they had persisted with their head up, and Shiro admired Pidge in many ways. Even when he was being chastised. “Maybe I’m not entirely fine,” Shiro admitted, running his fingers through his hair and smiling bashfully, “but I can handle this, Pidge, I promise.”

“Yeah, alright,” Pidge said, sounding a little doubtful. “Now go home, Shiro, you need to relax and get some sleep, alright?”

He didn’t want to admit that his apartment felt too empty and his bed felt too big when Keith wasn’t there and that sleep was practically impossible when he didn’t know if Keith was alive, so he smiled and got up and gathered his stuff to go home. When he made dinner, he made it for two, because he still hoped a little bit, and watched the news while he ate, not quite paying attention, though his eyes darted every time he saw a flash of red on the screen.

He checked over his apartment thoroughly one more time before going to sleep.

The next day, Hunk gave him a homemade lunch and Shiro accepted it with a smile and genuine thanks, though the question of just how obvious he was being with his distress popped into his mind. He still ate the lunch, and accepted Lance’s invitation to come over for dinner with him, Hunk, and Pidge.

“I haven’t seen your boy around recently,” Ms. Jing said one early morning when Shiro met her on his way to his car. “What a shame, that, he was such a nice and polite young man. Do try to make up with him as soon as possible, would you?”

“He’s just gotten a little busy,” Shiro said, smiling down at the elderly woman. “I’ll let him know that you miss him, though.”

“That’s all I ask, Shiro,” Ms. Jing said with a toothy grin.

A week and a half more passed and it was almost February when Shiro heard a knock on the door while he was getting ready for bed and he tore away from the bathroom. He threw open the door without a second thought, and in hindsight that was a terrible idea, but when he saw Keith standing out in the hall he almost collapsed with relief.

“I —— I forgot my phone,” Keith said, looking worn and bruised and listing a little bit and Shiro caught him in his arms when he swayed forwards. “Sorry, I was going to text saying that I was okay.”

“I’m not going to say it’s fine,” Shiro said, gentling his voice as much as possible as he led Keith into the apartment and closed the door behind them, but he was still half entering Leader Mode, anyways. “but I am going to say that I’m glad that you’re okay. More than glad.”

Keith didn’t quite respond, but he was practically limp against Shiro, clearly exhausted and not even showing the true extent of whatever had happened to him. He definitely felt thinner in his arms.

“We can talk about this in the morning,” Shiro said, before leaning down to press a kiss against the crown of Keith’s head. “Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight?”

“Please,” Keith said, eyes closing as if it was painful to utter that single word, and Shiro pulled him close and gently led him into his bedroom. He helped him undress in part, before pulling away and getting out what he had begun to think of as Keith’s favorite lounging clothes.

By the time Shiro finished getting ready for bed, Keith was already lying beneath the covers, and Shiro crawled in next to him. He let Keith grab at his arms and pull and tug him into position, and he curved around Keith warmly, chest to back.

In the early morning light, Shiro sat Keith down on the living room couch and sat in front of him, bandaging up a few cuts and checking his ribs and checking all of his limbs carefully. A few bruises, some scratches here and there. The most concerning thing was that Keith seemed to have sprained his ankle, so Shiro wrapped that carefully.

“I just wanted to know,” Keith said quietly, pulling Shiro’s hand into his lap and playing with his fingers absently. “I hated the feeling of waiting for someone or something to drag me back. I wanted to find them and —— I don’t know. I wanted to find them.”

“Not the best plan,” Shiro said, pulling Keith’s hand towards him and kissing his palm gently. “If they don’t want to be found, they can’t be found.”

“I found some of them,” Keith said, staring at the way that their fingers curved and tangled. “Not much. Got in a few scrapes while I was away. I’m sorry that I worried you.”

“Let’s try not to disappear without leaving a note behind or taking your phone with you anymore, shall we?” Shiro said with a soft smile, leaning up to kiss the corner of Keith’s mouth. “I’d rather get a heads up versus worry about whether or not you’re ever coming back.”

“I’ll always come back,” Keith said, tightening his grip on Shiro’s hand and looking up, their eyes meeting. There was a nearly roaring determination and sincerity in his eyes and something warm curled around Shiro’s spine, seeping in and spreading out and it felt like everything. Like it could be everything. It could almost shove the inky darkness that had been clinging to his intestines for far too long. “Or I’ll always try to come back. This is the only place that I know,” Keith paused for a moment, coloring a little bit at his ears, before saying, “this is where you are.”

Breath shuddered out of Shiro and it felt like his very bones were rattling against each other and he dipped his head down, leaning it against Keith’s knee and pressing close, practically curling around his legs. Around his feet. It was like a fire had been ignited in his veins, and he knew that it couldn’t be everything, because a person couldn’t be a person’s everything, but they could drive the cold away. It was enough.

Keith was enough. Keith was more than enough.

Shiro pulled Keith’s hand to his lips again and mouthed the words against his skin and he could feel Keith tremble underneath him. The early morning was too quiet to say the words aloud. It was too quiet. But he knew that Keith understood, knew that he understood by the way that his back bowed as if the weight of the universe had just been placed upon his back, and Shiro could feel Keith bending over him. Could feel Keith’s forehead against his head, and for a moment it felt like they were contained in their own little world.

Shiro closed his eyes and lingered for a little bit longer.

——

Winter was melting to spring and Shiro was dragging slow kisses down Keith’s back on an early Sunday morning and Keith was humming gently beneath him and Shiro could hear his hand flexing and curling against fabric. Part of Shiro wanted to laugh because it sounded and felt like Keith was practically purring, but he kept his mouth shut and pressed his fingers absently against raised skin. He knew the shape of it, he knew the thick dark ink that covered it.

His phone rang and he rolled towards it immediately, sitting up straight as he answered. Before he got the chance to say anything, Allura said, “Shiro, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Nothing immediately serious then, but Allura’s tone stopped him from relaxing completely. “Not too much,” Shiro said, and he could hear Keith snort behind him and he smiled when he felt a poke at his lower back. “Is everything okay, Allura?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to meet with you sometime today,” she said, voice settling somewhere between mild and intent and Shiro tried to wrack his mind to figure out if anything had gone wrong.

“Of course,” Shiro said, gaze flitting towards the window where the sun was still rising. “We could meet for lunch, if you want.”

“That’s perfect,” Allura said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. She rattled off a restaurant to him soon after that, and they said their goodbyes before hanging up.

The moment he hung up the phone, Keith slung his arm around Shiro’s hips and dragged himself close, pressing his mouth on top of Shiro’s spine. He said nothing, and Shiro set his hand on his wrist and leaned back into him subtly before twisting and blanketing Keith with his body, laughing when Keith groaned and complained loudly.

When Shiro arrived at the restaurant later that day, he was shown to her table where Allura was sitting primly with two glasses of water, peering over a menu. He sat down across from her and they greeted each other warmly, before focusing on ordering. Allura decided on pasta and Shiro decided on a chicken dish and when the waiter left them, Allura smoothed a napkin over her lap carefully and Shiro followed suit.

“There has recently been a string of strange robberies from obscure places,” Allura said evenly, and Shiro leaned forwards and the world came down to the two of them temporarily. “Nothing noteworthy and nothing that would really appear on our radar, so I only know because many things are filtered by me.”

“Alright,” Shiro said, head tilting.

“I need you to answer something honestly, Shiro,” Allura said, face setting and she was beautiful and she was endlessly dedicated to her work and Shiro had always admired her. “You’re been concerned about Galra, haven’t you?”

Every muscle along Shiro’s back and shoulders tensed and locked and he sat straighter as a result and it felt as if ice had been dropped into his gut and warmth was being sucked away. He knew, logically, that there was no true way to hide anything from his team indefinitely. There was definitely no hiding anything from Allura. “Yes, I have been,” he finally admitted and saying it aloud nearly ravaged his throat. It was a weakness. It was a crack in the foundation that could cause everything to come crashing down.

“Some footage from the thefts caught my eye,” Allura said, voice going quiet and face going soft, but there was no pity in her face. Only gentility. Shiro appreciated that. “It is, most likely, nothing. However, I wanted to let you know now, rather than later.” He tipped his head and tried to pave over the crack before it spread further.

Their food arrived then and they thanked their waiter with a smile until he was walking away and then Allura’s smile dropped and she inhaled deeply, glancing down at her food before looking at Shiro again. Fearless. “The footage was corrupted and jumpy, but for a few frames I believe that I caught a glimpse of a Bayard.”

The crack was spreading its limbs and suddenly, he could barely breathe. It felt like his throat was about to collapse in on itself and he would die of asphyxiation. That would be kinder, maybe. “A Bayard,” he said, dazed and staring a point right above Allura’s shoulder.

“It could be nothing,” Allura said.

“You don’t believe in coincidences,” Shiro didn’t, either. None of them really did. It was part of the job description.

“No, I don’t,” Allura said, head tilting.

“Bayards are capable of horrible things,” Shiro said distantly, staring at his food and losing all desire to eat.

“Horrible things,” Allura said, eyes suddenly going melancholy and sad and something in him panged because he knew she was thinking of her late father. Galra had taken things from all of them, in part. “Which is why we protect the remaining ones with our lives.”

“We still lost some, though,” Shiro felt the heavy weight of guilt drape itself over his shoulders and he sagged with it, almost couldn’t breathe through it.

“We did,” Allura said, because she was forthright and no nonsense, but then she went softer. “I just wanted you to know about the situation, and I know it’s senseless for me to tell you not to worry about it, but, Shiro?” His head was spinning but he shifted his gaze to her and nodded, prompting her to continue. “I need you to know that I, and the rest of the team, are here for you no matter what, and you don’t need to carry this burden alone.”

He smiled and thanked her and knew that he wasn’t being entirely convincing from the look that she gave him, but he tucked into his meal anyways and they shared amicable conversation thereafter. Shiro still ended up taking over half of his dish home, unable to stomach the rest of it.

The moment that he walked into his apartment, Keith looked up from his book and stared at Shiro for all of two seconds before standing up and saying, “Let’s go for a run together,” and Shiro didn’t want to know what he looked like, for Keith to immediately jump to the option of distracting him. He acquiesced, regardless, changing and tying on his running shoes and they left the apartment building together.

They started out at a light jog that soon transitioned into a run that directed them towards the park. The last dredges of winter were still clinging to the city and the park was empty, for the most part, and when they reached a large clearing Keith shouted, “Race you to the other side,” before taking off at full speed.

Shiro started after him a second later and sprinted fast enough that clinging thoughts were ripped away from him and he couldn’t help but laugh as he tried to catch up to Keith, knowing that it was pointless because Keith was faster than him, no matter what.

That didn’t stop him from tackling Keith over into the grass, though. Keith laughed, too, and indulged him in light wrestling before hopping up and continuing down the path, still chuckling as he went. Shiro followed, and he lost himself for a little while.

The last two miles of their run Keith turned into a race again and Shiro darted after him and when they got back to the apartment they were a sweaty, dripping mess. Keith pressed into the shower with him and they laughed as soap got into their mouths and their feet slipped and arms bumped and they ate dinner together on the couch, legs tangled and heads tipped together.

When they went to bed, Keith tucked himself close to Shiro’s side and Shiro understood and closed his eyes and drifted.

The ominous feeling didn’t start clawing at him again until he was at work the next morning.

——

As spring settled and nature came back to life in Altea, the nightmares got worse.

Flashes of purples and blacks and darkness and pain and he woke to himself clawing desperately at the seam of skin and metal more than once. Those were always the worst of the dreams. Relatively speaking, of course. Phantom pains sparked up and down his arm, though he knew that there was nothing there anymore that could feel pain, and he resented them.

On the worst nights, though, Keith was there, lying near him in the dark, quiet and watchful and understanding. He didn’t try to touch Shiro until he had calmed, until his heartrate had steadied and he was no longer grappling at his arm with the desperation of a drowning man clawing for air. When he calmed, Keith would reach out gently and smooth his fingers across the seam, fearlessly feeling along scar tissue and thumbing at the metal and touching him with all of the gentility in the world. As if he were something precious.

“Is this okay?” Keith would ask, quiet in the stillness of night.

Shiro would nod and Keith would skim his fingers up Shiro’s arms and ask, again, if it was alright. By the end of it, their palms were pressed together and their fingers tangled and Keith would tap out the rhythm of his heart against Shiro’s index finger and he would drift off to it, caught between restful and restless but sleeping all the same.

In the harsh and damning light of the morning Keith would ask nothing and instead make breakfast as he made coffee and they would eat together quietly, legs tangling beneath the table. At the start of spring, Keith began to kiss him goodbye in the mornings, seeming flustered by it but determined all the same. It was all so genuinely charming and almost made Shiro’s heart skip a beat, every time.

His team all doubtlessly noticed the fact that he hadn’t been getting a sufficient amount of sleep, as of late, whether it be due to his listlessness or the heightened frequency of his yawns, but they said nothing. Instead, they offered him understanding looks and offers to food and he knew they understood.

Division Zero, Team Voltron, was created in order to deal with the worst of society. The immoral, the debased, the worst of the worst. The criminals that most people should not have to handle. They were Inspectors assigned Bayards and called Paladins, given the individual power to destroy buildings and the combined power to raze cities. They were assigned to Division Zero because they were the ones qualified to.

They had all seen things that they didn’t want to remember, in the aftermath.

So they understood. His team understood.

That didn’t mean that he was off the hook when a new assignment arrived on their desk, however.

A string of murders with their hearts gouged out of their chests, this time. Ostensibly, that was the cause of death, and there was no apparent sedation of the victims, making it true and absolute torture. They were called in when the first body was found, entirely bypassing the idea of giving it to another Division, and they set to work posthaste.

“It could be personal,” Hunk said, “I mean, it’s a gouged out heart, it seems a little personal.”

“Personal is slitting someone’s throat,” Keith said later that night when they were lying in bed, not quite touching anywhere except for their hands, fingers overlapping. “gouging out someone’s heart is making a statement.”

“You don’t think that killing someone by cutting them open and taking out their heart is personal?” Shiro said, tapping their index fingers together.

“It’s intimate, but it doesn’t seem personal,” Keith said, “especially because the killer left their victim somewhere extremely public. If it were personal, then it wouldn’t be so public.”

When the second body was found, it was decidedly not personal.

The third body showed up and they were all sure that it was impersonal on all levels.

Predictably, or perhaps not predictably at all, the murderer just found something poetically beautiful bout gouging out people’s hearts. Something about the fragility of life, or the strength of a heart, or something like that. The killer did, in fact, keep the hearts.

April was blurring into May when they closed the case and he glanced at the calendar in the midst of the paperwork and ignored the way that the darkness which clung to his ribs began to leech its way across and settle upon his heart, his lungs, his soft innards. He ignored it and focused on his paperwork and gently chastised Lance and Hunk for trying to put theirs off and ruffled Pidge’s hair when they finished and checked in with Allura and, when all was said and done, went home to Keith.

He started to check that file constantly, again. He never opened it. He already knew what it said when it played, after all. He didn’t need to hear it again.

Keith traced his fingers along Shiro’s spine one late night when neither of them could sleep and pressed his mouth against his skin and said nothing at all. Recently, Keith had been quiet and distant but receptive to touch and not quite looking at Shiro but never looking away, either. Always physically close, but he seemed resigned to something and Shiro hated it.

They kissed and Shiro’s heart beat for him, some days. Other days, his heart beat for himself.

May was settling and Shiro was remembering how to breathe around a bleak stickiness in his throat when all hell seemed to break loose.

A string of riots broke out around Altea midday on a Tuesday and by the time that all Divisions were sent out, substantial damage had been wrought. Hundreds were injured and dozens were dead and public property had been razed and there was destruction and chaos everywhere as Team Voltron worked to subdue the rowdiest section in the heart of downtown. 

By the time that they got injured civilians into ambulances and tried to gather the worst of them, Shiro knew that there would be an impressive bruise coloring his cheek and littering his body along his arms, legs, and chest. Nothing immediately horrible, at least, as they had managed to subdue the people who were repurposing everyday objects into weapons first.

Everyone fared similarly, though Lance would end up with a solid black eye and Pidge was limping a little bit and Hunk was wheezing after being kicked in the gut. Allura looked put together, but she winced when she moved her arm and Coran was practically keeling over, and Shiro wasn’t entirely sure what caused his pain. Steel rod to the stomach, someone told him later.

It took him two seconds to realize that Keith wasn’t in the apartment later that night, and he tamped down any inherent desire to panic as a result. Shiro moved around the apartment and made dinner and it was only when he sat down on the couch in the quiet that he realized that there was something wrong.

Keith’s knife was on the table.

Shiro shot off of the couch immediately and turned and combed over the apartment again with all of the care in the universe, aware of the way that his heart was thudding in time with his breaths, which were coming quicker and quicker. He went over the apartment slowly and thoroughly and found just about nothing out of place.

Except for the fact that Keith never went anywhere by himself without his knife.

The knife was something that Keith took with him always, no matter what, no matter how long he had stayed with Shiro. Months had passed and every time he came back to the apartment and Keith wasn’t there waiting for him, the knife wasn’t there either. It was a matter of safety, security, and the fact that the knife and the clothes that he originally came in were all that Keith owned.

It was still there, though. The knife was still there. That meant something. That said a lot. It said that Keith had either forgotten the knife, which was extremely unlikely, or hadn’t left out of his own will, which was a thought that made the bottom of Shiro’s stomach fall out.

Shiro went over the apartment three times before coming to a pause in the middle of his entryway and he stared at the door, not quite thinking beyond the thrum of his heart and the repetition of Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith in his mind. His hands were flexing and clenching in time beside him and he started when he heard a noise, looking to and fro and finding nothing. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and felt cold drip through his veins.

Then he grabbed his jacket and started out the door, all but flying down the stairs.

He used his badge to gain entrance into the prison and he strode down the hall, quick and short movements and requested, with all of the patience and kindness that he could manage, to see one of their prisoners. He was shown the way to a booth split down the middle with a glass wall and stood in wait.

Their most recent murderer was pushed into the room a few minutes later.

“Care to explain why I have the honors of speaking to my jailor?” the woman said with a raised brow and a toothy smile, cuffed hands in front of her.

“I have a question for you,” Shiro said, hooking his thumbs into his pockets and leaning back. “Where is your boss?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the woman looked surprised, but it took her just a beat too long to muster up an expression of shock as her head tilted and her eyes opened wide. “You know who my boss is, you found me through him, after all.”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Shiro said coolly, even as discontent writhed inside of him and lashed at his skin. “There was someone who equipped you with the things that you needed to commit those murders. You were working for someone, or being sponsored by someone. Where can I find them?”

“Are you trying to say I have no urgency, Captain?” she looked almost offended, and entirely false, “how rude.”

Shiro was starting forward before he was really aware of it and he slammed his hand against the glass, just the one and just his human one as he leaned in close, “I know that you were working for Galra,” he pitched his voice soft and careful and tried to not feel like he was choking just saying the name. “Or that they were supporting you in some way or another. Galra doesn’t like loose ends —— the last person who ended up in here that was connected to them was dead in their cell not long after they were locked up. You will meet a similar end, regardless of whether or not you help me, so this is dependent on if you want to do some good before I leave you tonight.”

The tremble in the woman’s arm was subtle but still evident and Shiro stood there for a few more long moments before taking a step back, ready to leave. His heart was sinking, because he had no other leads, but he would have to try elsewhere.

She started talking when he reached the door.

——

“Allura, I’m just letting you know that I’m taking my gun from our convoy,” Shiro said when she picked up her phone. She was yawning and it was early in the morning and he felt some amount of guilt over waking her up, but it was imperative that he let her know.

Of course, a few moments later, Allura was decidedly not yawning and sounded incredibly awake, “Shiro, what are you doing?”

“There’s a situation,” he said distantly.

“What sort of situation?” Allura said slowly and carefully and he could hear the rustle of sheets on her side of the line and he could imagine the intense look that had settled over her face as she sat up in bed.

“Keith was taken by Galra,” Shiro said, because there was no beating around the bush when it came to this sort of thing. “I managed to extract a lead on where to find him out of one of our suspects, so I’m going after him.”

“Shiro, that’s insane,” Allura’s voice when sharp and angry and he could hear her standing up. “You cannot go after them on your own, not with what happened last time.”

The words struck him like a blow to the chest and he swallowed thickly as he grabbed his gun from their convoy, switching it on and tucking it close to his side as he shut their weapons away again and made his way back to his car. “There’s no time to waste, Allura, I have to do this.”

“Shiro, we can be there within the hour,” she never pleaded, she was always forthright and absolute and did not pause in the face of danger, but this was as close as she got to pleading.

He knew that she meant it. If he waited, if he stood still for a little while, then his team would get to him as soon as humanly possible. They would work with him to find Keith, to find where Galra was festering, and they wouldn’t let him go in alone. Together, they were stronger. On his own, he could be strong enough, but the chances were lower.

Yet the longer he stood still, the more risk that Keith was in.

Shiro fell silent and climbed into his car and leaned back, breathing carefully and staring out of his windshield. “I’m sorry, Allura,” he said, before hanging up and his car came alive as he tore away from the curb.

——

Getting there was fuzzy, but everything was in startling clarity when he actually got to where he wanted to be. Day had passed and night had risen once more and he had turned his phone off, eventually, to stave off calls from his team. It took going through a few bases and several different haunts and unapologetically threatening several people for him to have finally gotten to where he needed to go.

He sent a text message before he went in.

His muscles were tense and his anxiety was high and he was sloppy when dealing with a few of Galra’s people when trying to get to their primary base of operations. They got in hits that he should have been able to block and he incapacitated them with some difficulty, moving forwards.

The fact that he ended up overpowered wasn’t as much of a surprise that it should have been, but it was frustrating all the same. A solid kick behind his knees and a shove at his sternum and he was toppling over and being dragged off and he fought against the pull, fear suddenly spiking in his stomach because it was all familiar. Too familiar. It felt like he was trying to swallow his heart and he could barely see straight, and he rolled when he was all but flung into a room.

They took his phone before they left him.

He didn’t stay down for long before lunging upwards and going for the door, hues of purple and darkness blurring his vision and he punched at the door with his metal arm, feeling the vibrations resonating back at him as he lurched back. Shiro paced the room several times, unable to quite stay still and feeling too keyed up to stay still even if he could have.

It may have been a few minutes or a few hours before a door elsewhere in the room slid open and he whirled, and it was near impossible to breathe when he saw who was on the other side of it.

Zarkon.

_A respected Inspector, yet you have so much to learn. Worry not, Takashi Shirogane, we will make you more than you already were. If you survive this, you will be stronger for it. I am eager to see your progress, Captain._

That was what the voice clip said. It was the last thing that his equipment had recorded before there was nothing. They were words that haunted him still, two years later.

Shiro could feel his muscles tremble about his shoulders but he tried to remain steady and calm in the face of what could, perhaps, be considered his greatest enemy. The man who had wrought havoc in Altea two years ago, who he had gone after despite insistence that he let it rest. The crime lord who had almost seen him to his end. It wasn’t Zarkon who cut him open and took away his arm and gave him a new one and changed him at his very core, but he was the one who commanded it.

“Where is he?” Shiro said with a steady voice.

“When I let you go, I did it in good faith,” Zarkon said, “we remade you, and wanted to see what you would become. The outcome is disappointing, really. You didn’t even notice that each killer was a mere distraction so that Division Zero didn’t notice our movements.”

“And Keith? What about him?” Shiro said.

“A special case,” Zarkon said coolly, before gesturing with his hand and Shiro’s back could have bowed backwards with the way that his muscles locked. “He was found and chosen for some of his more unique properties, and we trained him. Human minds are so malleable, after all. Come, boy.”

When Keith stepped out of the shadows Shiro thought he could have vomited.

For all intents and purposes, he looked unharmed and relatively fine, dressed in the black clothing that Shiro had found him in in the beginning, but there was something in the way that he held himself and there was something in his expression that turned Shiro’s stomach. It was Keith, it looked like Keith, but the distance in his eyes and the neutrality in his mouth weren’t Keith at all. It looked like a shell of him, barely alive at all.

Keith, for all of his passive expressions, had always been so full of life.

“What did you do to him?” Shiro said, never quite looking away from Keith yet hyperaware of the fact that Zarkon was there and there was a smile on his face. His spine was crawling.

“Nothing that hadn’t already been done,” Zarkon said with a wave of his hand, “We chose him under special circumstances and he is ours. We gave him to you out of curiosity, a reminder to you that we are always watching, but we decided to take him back.”

“He isn’t yours,” Shiro said, temper spiking and anger flitting into his voice and he took a step forward, and in a heartbeat he was on the ground and Keith was on him.

He heaved instinctually, trying to throw the younger man off of him, but Keith got a strong grip on his shoulders and they rolled, grappling at each other. Keith got a hand free and swung at Shiro’s face and Shiro twisted his neck, wincing at the sound that Keith’s bones made as he made contact with the ground.

“Well, he certainly isn’t yours,” Zarkon continued, pacing forwards and stepping around them, giving the two men a wide berth. “We had expected you to take him in, what with your bleeding heart,” Zarkon said as Keith narrowly missed Shiro again and they rolled and Shiro tried to restrain Keith without hurting him. “Developing such feelings for him was unforeseen, but we can work with it, given the circumstances. He, at least, will come out of this evolved.”

Keith writhed and managed to dig a knee in Shiro’s stomach and nailed him in the face and the world reeled around him and he was acutely aware of the fact that he had practically been pummeled two days ago during the riots and he pushed himself back up, only to slump over.

“We are almost primed and ready to see the Ministry of Welfare to fall, as it should have long ago, being as infested as it is. So, there’s no reason to keep you alive,” Zarkon said, and Shiro pushed himself up, squinting and almost gaping as he noticed the black Bayard in Zarkon’s hands, lit and active, and the red Bayard in his other, inactive beneath his touch.

Logically, he knew that Zarkon could use the black Bayard. He had known that for two years.

He knew what was happening as Zarkon held out the red Bayard and Keith took it, eyes dead and face slack in its neutrality and there was no spark in his eyes, nothing in his face, nothing at all. The red Bayard lit up in Keith’s hands, though, coming alive the way that Shiro had never seen it come alive, activating and shifting beneath his hands and there was something in Shiro that wanted to fight as Keith turned it on him, but there was also something else in him that told him to yield.

Shiro had never been good at rolling over, though.

Even if it was Keith.

Keith leveled the Bayard at him and Shiro lurched forward, teeth baring as he started forward, heart aching and lungs near bursting, only for all breath to leave him as Keith solidly smacked the Bayard against Shiro’s cheek. He skidded along the ground, winded and gasping, and he just looked up in time to see Keith twist and level the Bayard at Zarkon before firing.

Zarkon didn’t even have the time to react.

The shot tore through him and Shiro stared with wide eyes as it looked like his skin bubbled around the hole ravaged through his chest and all of Zarkon’s limbs seemed to twitch strongly once, before his left arm flew off and he crumpled, the Bayard ripping through him. The black Bayard fell to the ground as blood began to pool from Zarkon’s body and Shiro didn’t move.

Lethal force, then.

Shiro saw Keith lean down in his periphery and pick up the black Bayard and it flickered beneath his touch but didn’t quite come alive and Shiro could only stare as Keith walked towards him. The emptiness had fled him and relief gusted through Shiro as he saw the pull of Keith’s mouth and the exhaustion in his eyes and when Keith held out the Bayard, Shiro took it.

It came alive beneath his grip and its weight was familiar in his hands and he breathed.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said as he kneeled in front of Shiro, reaching out but not quite touching him.

Shiro was glad for that. “It’s fine,” he said honestly, holding the Bayard loosely in his grip, “I’m just glad that you’re okay.”

"There was a word, or a phrase, or something. They could control me but only halfway," Keith said quietly, glancing down at the glowing Bayard in his hands.

"You were stronger than them," Shiro said as yelling started to grow closer to them.

"Escape plan?" Keith's mouth set. 

“Got it covered,” Shiro said, thinking about his phone. “I’m sure that my team is almost here, by now. Texted them my location.”

There were gunshots down the hall that answered that question a few moments later. Timing, and all that.

Keith nodded once before leaning forwards and then hesitating, still not touching him, “You remember what I promised you, right?” his voice was still quiet, hushed, even as the sounds of war grew closer to them. Shiro looked Keith in the eye and knew immediately and nodded, knowing that understanding was bleeding into his expression.

“I remember,” Shiro said, for the sake of verbal confirmation.

A smile flickered across Keith’s face before he leaned forwards and tucked his knife into Shiro’s pocket.

The door busted open soon after and his team came in. Allura walked over to them immediately, ignoring the fact that Zarkon was lying dead on the floor, and glared at Shiro with an almost numbing intensity. “I thought we talked about you going off on your own to do stupid and heroic things.”

“I guess there are some things I’ll never learn,” Shiro said with a wry smile and Allura sighed explosively before gesturing to everyone else to come forward.

It was a blur of motion and people after that and Shiro was sitting on the back of an ambulance, being patched up for his minor wounds, before being taken straight back to the Ministry of Welfare. He answered the required questions and divulged his own truth in what transpired that night, editing himself in as the one who killed Zarkon. He knew that Keith would do the same.

The sun was rising by the time that it was over for the day and Shiro sat at his desk, eyes closed. He opened them again at the sound of things being set on his desk and he smiled at Hunk thankfully for the coffee and breakfast, taking a long and slow drink from the cup.

“I haven’t seen Keith since we handed him off for questioning,” Lance said, turning about in his chair. “Any idea where he is, Shiro?”

“Not a clue,” Shiro said honestly, picking up a piece of bacon and crunching into it.

Keith was long gone.

When Shiro checked, the box in his bedside table was gone, too. It had been Keith’s present for the holidays: a simple silver chain with a simple silver band that was, for all intents, a ring. The original purpose of the gift had been a promise.

Shiro supposed that it was fulfilling its intention.

——

Summer had settled over Altea, thick and heavy and overwhelming and wearing his uniform was almost torturous, even though he was only outside for a few moments at a time. In the office they had a fan running in spite of the air conditioning, purely because they all had a sheen of sweat then arriving into the office and they all demanded some sort of relief.

“So this heatwave is never ending,” Hana said one morning when he walked into the building and Shiro laughed in agreement.

“I’m gonna die,” Lance said, leaning back in his chair, tie loosened and the top few buttons of his uniform shirt undone, “I’m actually gonna die, this weather is going to melt me.”

“Unless you’re going to have a heat stroke, you aren’t going to die, Lance,” Pidge said patiently, adjusting their glasses as they type away at their computer.

Early into summer, before the heat had truly set in with all of its horror, a few weeks after Keith’s departure from Altea, Lance had turned to Shiro and given him a considering look before saying, “So what I’m getting from this is that Keith left you.”

“What?” Pidge said, voice going high and reedy.

“He needed to go for the time being,” Shiro said calmly, looking at Lance with a smile. “Get some space, clear his head.”

“Why would he break up with you?” Pidge’s gaze was narrowing, “I thought that you guys were doing fine.”

“We didn’t break up,” Shiro laughed a little bit at the concept, “he just needed to go take care of something.”

“Shiro is in denial, guys,” Lance said with intense seriousness, “this calls for drastic measures.”

“Stop it, you two,” Allura said with a stern look, “leave Shiro alone. He knows his relationship far more than any of us do, that’s for sure.”

Later that same day, Hunk looked at Shiro with wonderment in his face and Shiro prompted him to speak up and he seemed flustered before saying, “How do you know that Keith will come back? He left, after all, didn’t he?”

Something in Shiro ached with every mention and thought of Keith, which meant that he was aching constantly since Keith had left, a dull sort of thing just to the right of his heart, thudding in time with his pulse. He still smiled though, because the aching wasn’t sharp and absolute, it was faint and almost gentle and he held onto it carefully. “It’s hard to explain, Hunk. I just know that he’ll come back, that’s all.”

Soon after that, Pidge’s father and brother came back from their time held captive by Galra and everyone forgot about Keith’s absence, for the time being, in the face of such happiness. Shiro had never seen Pidge cry so much before, and his heart ached for them, and he was genuinely glad to see Dr. Holt and Matt again.

“Thank you, for taking care of Pidge,” Dr. Holt said when he and Shiro were alone for a few moments.

“Pidge took care of themselves,” Shiro said honestly with a soft grin, “I barely did a thing. I’m glad that you’re back, though. Now you can be proud of them, yourself.”

“Of course I’m proud,” Dr. Holt said, a shimmer in his eyes, “they’re my kid, after all. I always knew that they would do great things.”

“We’re going to call them Lions,” Coran said one day when he was showing Shiro the plans that he had adapted from Alfor’s original plans from before he had passed. “They’re going to be high tech and fantastic for our purposes.”

“Feels a bit military,” Shiro said with some humor.

“Worry not, Shiro,” Coran said as he tapped the blueprints, “the weapons plan for these vehicles are not going to be included in the final design, these are merely preliminary. Hopefully, by utilizing the same technology that Alfor did, though we don’t quite understand it, the Lions will respond to Paladins the way that Bayards do. If not, then it’s back to the drawing board.”

“I think that they’ll turn out amazingly,” Shiro said, before looking down at the plans and brushing his fingers over the Red Lion’s design. “Let us know if you need any help, alright?”

“No need to worry,” Coran said, back straightening and hands settling on his hips proudly, “with Dr. Holt being back, and his brains combined with Pidge’s and my own, this is sure to be a cinch.”

Partway through June, Hana asked him out on a date with red cheeks and a slightly averted gaze and a sweet smile and Shiro couldn’t help but think of Keith and ached a little bit more. “Sorry, Hana,” he said with all of the apology he could inject into his tone and she seemed to wilt beneath his gaze and he wanted to place her in light and water her to ensure that she could flourish. “It’s just that I’m taken,” he explained.

“You’re taken?” she said, eyebrows raised and looking both dubious and surprised.

“I do,” Shiro said with a smile, “I have a boyfriend that I care about a lot.”

“Oh,” Hana said, seeming flustered again and she laughed, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Wow, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I’d like to meet him one day, though.”

“I promise that I’ll introduce you to him,” Shiro said.

“Where is your boy?” Ms. Jing said one night when Shiro was helping her fix a cabinet door in her apartment. “Did you two have a fight again?”

“No,” Shiro said with a laugh as he fit the door against its hinges, double checking to make sure that it was all even. “He’s just away for a little while, that’s all. He’s due to come back soon, though,” he didn’t know if Keith was coming back soon, relatively speaking, but on the days where his heart beat for Keith, he found space inside of himself, right between his lungs, to hope.

On the days when his heart beat for himself, he remembered that Keith would come back one day. There was no rush.

For all the days between, he returned to his empty apartment and didn’t comb over every last inch of it every night, he only did so on some nights. He made himself dinner for one and sat down to watch television when he was done eating and sometimes picked up the knife on his coffee table and examined its edges. When he didn’t, it remained where it always was, right in the middle of his coffee table, awaiting its true owner’s return.

When he went to sleep, he fell asleep alone and woke up alone. When he woke from a nightmare he jolted and tried to remember how to breathe and sometimes reached for the empty space beside him and when he reached for nothing but air, he ached a little bit more.

He was fine, though. He only wore his gloves some days, not every day. He hadn't woken up clawing at his arm in a while. He was getting better with every day.

Shiro was sure that Keith was doing the same.

——

Summer was in its twilight days and Team Voltron was gathered in a cluster outside of their convoy and were all holding their Bayards. It had taken Shiro two months to get accustomed to the feeling of the black Bayard in his hand once more, but he found that he was relieved to hold it again, to know that it was safe in his grasp.

Safe for the time being, at least.

“Alright, this time the captive is a child, which means that we need to move with haste but move carefully,” Allura said, calm and tense. “Apparently, the suspect is armed with bombs and left a trail of victims in their midst, though we aren’t yet sure if the victims were left alive or not, so some of us will have to check in with them while others advance. We need to finish this up quickly, to make sure that the child is safe.”

“Got it, boss,” Lance said, hauling his Bayard onto his shoulder.

Allura nodded and her gaze diverted from them for a moment and her mouth curled in spite of the situation that they were in. Behind them, they could hear something disengaging from their convoy and Shiro was already turning as Allura said, “We don’t have much time for introductions, but say hello to our newest Paladin.”

“Keith Shirogane reporting for duty,” Keith said, red Bayard singing in his grip as he greeted them, posture lax and not quite smiling, but looking impossibly right in his uniform with a hint of a silver chain looped around his neck. His mouth twitched when he looked at Shiro and the aching faded and something else bloomed in its place.

It felt warm, like his own private sun.

Lance was making a high pitched noise and Shiro knew that Pidge and Hunk were staring in shock, and he couldn’t help but laugh, a little bit.

“Alright, Team Voltron,” Shiro said, hefting his Bayard upward and still not looking away from Keith yet, “let’s go.”

After they saved the girl and detained the criminal and saw that the victims got proper medical attention and they filled out the proper paperwork the team managed to corner them before they could make their big escape. “Did you guys get married at some point?” Lance asked, loud and voice going high and almost whiny.

“What makes you think that?” Keith said dryly and Shiro honestly couldn’t tell if he was genuinely oblivious or just messing with Lance. Both were equally possible.

“Your last name is Shirogane, now,” Lance said, arms flailing and looking steadily more stressed out.

“So?” Keith said, and Shiro caught the brief curve of his mouth and covered his own to avoid laughing aloud.

Lance made a noise that distinctly sounded like a dying cat as Pidge said, “So you’re back to stay, then?” with a critical look, frowning up at Keith.

“For as long as I can,” Keith said with almost startling honesty, and Shiro couldn’t help but lean towards him a little bit. Sometimes it felt like Keith had his own gravitational pull, and Shiro was constantly caught in it. He found that he never wanted to leave it.

“Welcome back, man,” Hunk said with a smile, holding a hand out as Pidge nodded and crossed their arms. Keith looked confused for a moment before taking Hunk’s hand and lurching a bit at the hard shake that Hunk gave him.

“Now if you guys will excuse us,” Shiro said, stepping close to Keith, hovering a little bit, “we’re going to head out, so we’ll so you guys tomorrow.”

Everyone said their goodbyes and Shiro drove both of them back to his apartment and when they walked in they remained close to each other as the lights came on and it was quiet. It took a few minutes for Shiro to turn towards Keith and he still didn’t quite touch him. Keith turned towards him, too, loosening the knot of his tie as he went. When Keith leaned towards him subtly, Shiro reached forward and tangled their fingers gently, curving his neck and hovering close to him.

“Keith Shirogane?” Shiro asked quietly, a smile pulling at his mouth and he almost wanted to laugh, though he swallowed the urge.

“I needed a last name to put on my paperwork,” Keith said, coloring a bit at his edges but looking Shiro right in the eyes, and Shiro could have trembled beneath the force of Keith’s singular attention, something that he would have to get himself accustomed to once more. “You said that I could take your last name.”

“I did,” Shiro said, ducking forwards and pressing a brief kiss against Keith’s mouth. “I like the sound of it. Keith Shirogane.”

“Don’t be too smug,” Keith said, squeezing his hand and stepping into Shiro’s chest, bumping against it and craning his head up. Shiro couldn’t do anything except for kiss him again.

“Welcome back,” Shiro whispered against his mouth.

“I couldn't just let you get yourself killed, could I?” Keith didn’t move away either, their mouths brushing, “But I guess I’m —— home.”

His heart was swelling and throbbing and he could have collapsed beneath the weight of everything he was feeling and everything that Keith was. Keith was warmth in his veins, Keith was intertwined in his bones and his muscles and everything that he was. Keith was the stars in the night sky and the clear blue of the sky and he was the bright flare of flame and he was the comfort of warmth and Keith was enough. Always enough. “Welcome home,” Shiro said, before kissing Keith thoroughly and deeply.

They were home.

**Author's Note:**

> so anyways, if you want to scream about voltron and sheith with me, [here's my tumblr](http://demikeith.tumblr.com/).


End file.
